1526 Jul 6, King Afonso of
Kongo (1509-1542) sent a letter of complaint to Portugal regarding
the impact of slave trade in his country.
(www.millersville.edu/~winthrop/Thornton.html)
1526 Nov, The 1st American
slave revolt occurred in SC at the Spanish settlement of San Miguel
de Gualdape near the mouth of the Pee Dee River in South Carolina.
(http://whgbetc.com/mind/slave_revolts_2.html)
1526 The 1st Africans to the US
arrived at a Spanish settlement South Carolina.
(www.inmotionaame.org/timeline.cfm?bhcp=1)
1533 Cartagena de Indias
(Colombia) was founded by Spain and served as a major port for the
trade of slaves, gold and cargo.
(SSFC, 5/18/03, p.C12)
1619 Aug 20, The 1st African
slaves arrived to North America aboard a Dutch privateer. It docked
in Jamestown, Virginia, with twenty human captives among its cargo.
(SFC, 12/18/96, p.A25)(HN, 8/20/98)(PC, 1992,
p.224)
1621 Jan 3, William Tucker was
born. He is believed to be first American born African-American.
[1624 date also given]
(HN, 1/3/99)(MC, 1/3/02)
1632 Olivier Le Jeune (7), a
black boy born in Madagascar, was sold to a clerk in the future
province of Quebec. He was later considered the first known black
enslaved in Canada.
(SFC, 2/12/10, p.A18)
1641 Dec 1, Massachusetts
became the 1st colony to give statutory recognition to slavery. It
was followed by Connecticut in 1650 and Virginia in 1661.
(MC, 12/1/01)(HNQ, 5/20/02)
1652 May 10, John Johnson, a
free black, was granted 550 acres in Northampton, Va.
(MC, 5/10/02)
1652 May 18, A law was passed
in Rhode Island banning slavery in the colonies but it caused little
stir and was not enforced. More than 1,000 slave voyages were
mounted from Rhode Island, mostly in the 18th century, carrying more
than 100,000 Africans into slavery.
(HN, 5/18/99)(Reuters, 3/29/07)
1654 Nov 21, Richard Johnson, a
free black, was granted 550 acres in Virginia.
(MC, 11/21/01)
1660 Mar 13, A statute was
passed limiting the sale of slaves in the colony of Virginia.
(HN, 3/13/99)
1688 Feb 18, At a Quaker
meeting in Germantown, Pa, German Mennonites penned a memorandum
stating a profound opposition to Negro slavery. Quakers in
Germantown, Pa., adopted the fist formal antislavery resolution in
America.
(HN,
2/18/99)(www.germanheritage.com/Publications/cronau/cronau4.html)
1695 Nov 20, Zumbi, a Brazilian
leader of a hundred-year-old rebel slave group, was killed in an
ambush in Palmares. He was later honored by a National Day of Black
Consciousness.
(SFC, 8/16/01, p.A8)(SSFC, 11/18/12, p.G3)
1700 May 7, William Penn began
monthly meetings for Blacks advocating emancipation.
(MC, 5/7/02)
1701 The English slave
ship Henrietta Marie sank 35 miles off Key West, Florida, on its way
back to Europe. It had delivered 188 captured Africans to a slave
broker in Jamaica in exchange for sugar and other goods bound for
England. The wreck was found in 1972.
(SFC, 8/12/96, p.C5)(WSJ, 6/2/98, p.A20)(SSFC,
2/8/04, p.C12)
1704 May 20, Elias Neau formed
a school for slaves in NY.
(MC, 5/20/02)
1708 Feb 28, A slave revolt in
Newton, Long Island, NY, left 11 dead.
(MC, 2/28/02)
1712 Apr 7, There was a slave
revolt in New York City. A slave insurrection in New York City was
suppressed by the militia and ended with the execution of 21 blacks.
[see Jul 4]
(HN, 4/7/97)(HNQ, 6/10/98)
1716 Jun 6, The 1st slaves
arrived in Louisiana.
(MC, 6/6/02)
1734 In Canada a black slave
named Marie-Joseph Angelique was hanged for setting fire to the
Montreal home of her master. She became the title character in a
1999 play by Lorena Gale.
(WSJ, 6/22/99, p.A24)(SFC, 2/12/10, p.A18)
1739 Sep 9, A slave revolt in
Stono, SC, led by an Angolan slave named Jemmy, killed 20-25 whites.
Three slave uprisings occurred in South Carolina in 1739. Whites
soon passed black codes to regulated every aspect of slave life.
(SFC, 12/18/96,
p.A25)(www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part1/1p284.html)(AH, 2/05, p.66)
1741 A slave revolt in New York
caused considerable property damage but left people unharmed. Rumors
of a conspiracy among slaves and poor whites in New York City to
seize control led to a panic that resulted in the conviction of 101
blacks, the hanging of 18 blacks and four whites, the burning alive
of 13 blacks and the banishment from the city of 70. In 2005 Anne
Farrow, Joel Lang and Jennifer Frank authored “Complicity: The North
Promoted, Prolonged and Profited from Slavery,” which included a
chapter on the 1941 NYC slave revolt.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_Conspiracy_of_1741)(SFC,
12/18/96, p.A25)(SSFC, 10/2/05, p.F3)
1758 Apr 17, Frances Williams,
the first African-American to graduate for a college in the western
hemisphere, published a collection of Latin poems.
(HN, 4/17/99)
1759 Aug 24, William
Wilberforce (d.1833), was born in Hull, Yorkshire, England. He
became best known for his efforts relating to the abolition of
slavery in the British Empire.
(www.nndb.com/people/824/000049677/)(HNQ,
12/6/02)
1760 Feb 14, Richard Allen
(d.1831), 1st black ordained by a Methodist-Episcopal church, was
born in Philadelphia.
(HN, 2/14/98)
1765 More than 100 Africans
perished on the slave ship Sally in the voyage from Africa. Some
hanged themselves or starved to death. Some rebelled and were shot
dead or drowned. In 2007 the ship's log book, detailing the deaths
of slaves that occurred almost daily aboard the ship, was encased in
glass in an exhibit at Brown University.
(Reuters, 3/29/07)
1767 English slave traders
captured 2 native nobles, Little Ephraim Robin John and Ancona Robin
John on the west coast of Africa and took them in chains to
Dominica. They soon escaped but were resold into slavery in
Virginia. Some 4 years later they were taken to England and again
resold and returned to Virginia. They later made it back to their
home on the Calabar River (SE Nigeria) and became slave merchants
themselves. In 2004 Randy J. Sparks authored “The Princes of
Calabar.”
(WSJ, 5/21/04, p.W4)
1772 Jun 22, Slavery was in
effect outlawed in England by Chief Justice William Murray, First
Earl of Mansfield, following the trial of James Somersett. In 2005
Steven Wise authored “Though the Heavens May Fall: The Landmark
Trial that Led to the End of Human Slavery.”
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somersett%27s_Case)(Econ, 2/5/05,
p.76)(ON, 12/08, p.9)
1773 Thomas Day, English
abolitionist, wrote a poem with his friend John Bicknell called “The
Dying Negro.”
(Econ, 2/16/13, p.83)
1774 Jun 13, Rhode Island
became the 1st colony to prohibit importation of slaves.
(MC, 6/13/02)
1775 Apr 14, The first American
society for the abolition of slavery was organized by Benjamin
Franklin and Benjamin Rush in Philadelphia.
(AP, 4/14/97)(HN, 4/14/98)
1775 Jul 10, Gen Horatio Gates,
issued an order excluding blacks from Continental Army. [see Oct 8]
(MC, 7/10/02)
1775 Oct 8, Officers decided to
bar slaves and free blacks from Continental Army. [see Jul 10, Oct
23, Nov 12, Dec 31]
(MC, 10/8/01)
1775 Nov 12, General Washington
forbade the enlistment of blacks.
(MC, 11/12/01)
1775 Dec 9, Lord Dunmore
(1730-1809), governor of Virginia, lost decisively at the American
Revolution Battle of Great Bridge. Following that defeat, Dunmore
loaded his troops, and many Virginia Loyalists, onto British ships.
Smallpox spread in the confined quarters, and some 500 of the 800
members of his Ethiopian Regiment died.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Murray,_4th_Earl_of_Dunmore)(Econ,
8/10/13, p.26)
1775 Lord Dunmore, Royal
Governor of Virginia, called on local slaves to join the British
side to suppress the American Revolution: “When we win we will free
you from your shackles.” The British issued similar proclamations
throughout their North American colonies and enticed thousands of
indentured servants and slaves, known as Black Loyalists, to the
British side.
(MT, summer 2003, p.8)
1776 Jan 16, Continental
Congress approved the enlistment of free blacks. This led to the
all-black First Rhode Island Regiment, composed of 33 freedmen and
92 slaves, who were promised freedom if they served to the end of
the war. The regiment distinguished itself at the Battle of Newport.
(SFEC,11/23/97, Par p.19)(MC, 1/16/02)
1776 The Quakers of
Pennsylvania abolished slavery within the Society of Friends and
then took their crusade to society at large by petitioning the state
legislature to outlaw the practice.
(AH, 10/02, p.50)
1777 Jul 8, Vermont became the
1st American colony to abolish slavery.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Vermont)
1778 Feb 28, Rhode Island
General Assembly authorized the enlistment of slaves.
(MC, 2/28/02)
1779 Nov 12, A group of 20
slaves who had fought in the war submitted a petition to the New
Hampshire General Assembly, while the war was still being fought.
Lawmakers decided the time was not right. 6 of the slaves were later
freed. In 2013 a state Senate committee recommended that the state
posthumously emancipate 14 of the slaves who died in bondage. On
June 7, 2013, they were granted posthumous emancipation when Gov.
Maggie Hassan signed a largely symbolic bill that supporters hope
will encourage future generations to pursue social justice.
(SFC, 3/7/13, p.A5)(AP, 6/7/13)
1780 Mar 1, Pennsylvania
became the first U.S. state to abolish slavery (for new-borns only).
It was followed by Connecticut and Rhode Island in 1784, New York in
1785, and New Jersey in 1786. Massachusetts abolished slavery
through a judicial decision in 1783 (see July 8 1777).
(http://quod.lib.umich.edu/c/clementsmss/umich-wcl-M-230dau?view=text)
1783 Dec 31, Import of African
slaves was banned by all of the Northern American states.
(MC, 12/31/01)
1783 Some 3,000 Blacks, who had
obtained British certificates of freedom for their loyalty in the
American Revolution, arrived in Nova Scotia and spent some miserable
years there. In 1785 a delegation sailed to Britain where they were
offered passage to Africa in return for establishing a British
colony in Sierra Leone.
(MT, summer 2003, p.8)
1786 Sep 9, George Washington
called for the abolition of slavery.
(HN, 9/9/98)
1787 Apr 12, Philadelphia's
Free African Society formed.
(MC, 4/12/02)
1787 Sep 17, The US
Constitution included the Connecticut, or "Great," Compromise in
which every state was conceded an equal vote in the Senate
irrespective of its size, but representation in the House was to be
on the basis of the "federal ratio," an enumeration of the free
population plus three fifths of the slaves.
(SSFC, 11/2/03, p.M6)
1787 Dec, William Wilberforce,
on the suggestion of PM William Pitt, introduced a motion in British
Parliament for the abolition of the slave trade.
(ON, 4/05, p.2)
1787 Rev. Richard Allen and
Absalom Jones decided to form the Free African Society, a
non-denominational religious mutual aid society for the black
community. Eventually this society grew into the African Church of
Philadelphia.
(www.pbs.org)
1787 Granville Sharp, English
abolitionist, formed the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the
Slave Trade.
(ON, 12/08, p.9)
1787 Thomas Clarkson, deacon in
the Church of England, led the formation of the original
abolitionist committee, the interdenominational “Committee to Effect
the Abolition of the Slave Trade.” His committee distributed 1,000
copies of “A Letter to our Friends in the Country, to inform them of
the state of the Business.” This was later considered as possibly
the 1st direct-mail fund-raising letter. In 2004 Adam Hochschild
authored “Bury the Chains: Prophets and Rebels in the Fight to Free
an Empire’s Slaves.”
(SSFC, 1/23/05, p.F1)(ON, 4/05, p.1)
1787 British settlers bought
land from African tribal leaders in Sierra Leone and used it as a
haven for freed African slaves. The indigenous community, dominated
by the Mende, wiped out the first settlers. A 2nd group followed in
1792. The settlers intermarried but held themselves aloof,
monopolized power and discriminated against the original population.
In 2005 Simon Schama authored “Rough Crossings: Britain, the Slaves
and the American Revolution.”
(SFC, 3/11/98, p.A10)(SFC, 2/14/98, p.A8)(WSJ,
5/31/00, p.A26)(Econ, 8/27/05, p.66)(MT, summer 2003, p.8)
1788 Jan 20, The pioneer
African Baptist church was organized in Savannah, Ga.
(MC, 1/20/02)
1789 May 12, In England William
Wilberforce laid out his case for the abolition of slavery to the
House of Commons. This speech directly led to Britain’s abolition of
slavery in 1807.
(WSJ, 5/12/07, p.P14)
1790 Feb 11, The first petition
to Congress for emancipation of the slaves was made by the Society
of Friends.
(HNQ, 1/11/99)
1791 Aug 22, A Haitian slave
revolution began under voodoo priest Boukman.
(MC, 8/22/02)(SFCM, 5/30/04, p.9)
1791 Apr, William Wilberforce
again introduced a motion in British Parliament for the abolition of
the slave trade, but lost by a vote of 163 to 88.
(ON, 4/05, p.2)
1791 In St. Domingue Toussaint
L’Ouverture joined the slave rebellion against plantation owners and
later led a colonial revolt against France. In 1995 Madison Smart
Bell authored "All Souls Rising," a novel set in this period.
(SFEC, 1/26/97 BR, p.10)(SSFC, 4/8/01, BR
p.4)(SFCM, 5/30/04, p.10)
1792 Jan 28, Rebellious slaves
in Santo Domingo launched an attack on the city of Cap.
(HN, 1/28/99)
1792 Apr 4, American
abolitionist Thaddeus Stevens, U.S. Radical Republican congressional
leader, was born in Danville, Vt.
(AP, 4/4/98)(HN, 4/4/98)
1792 May 16, Denmark abolished
slave trade.
(MC, 5/16/02)
1792 William Wilberforce
introduced a new motion in British Parliament for the gradual
abolition of the slave trade. The “gradual” wording, proposed by
home office minister Henry Dundas, led to passage of the bill in the
House of Commons 230 to 85.
(ON, 4/05, p.2)
1792 The British St. George’s
Bay Company transported a 2nd group of settlers to Freetown. This
included 1,196 Blacks from Nova Scotia, 500 Jamaicans and dozens of
rebellious slaves from other colonies.
(MT, summer 2003, p.8)
1793 Feb 12, The US federal
government passed its first fugitive slave law. This gave slave
holders the right to reclaim their human property in free states.
(HN, 2/12/97)(WSJ, 1/30/03, p.D8)
1793 Aug 29, Slavery was
abolished in the French colony of Santo Domingo (Haiti).
(HN, 8/29/98)(MC, 8/29/01)
1794 Mar 22, Congress passed
laws prohibiting slave trade with foreign countries, although
slavery remained legal in the United States. Congress banned US
vessels from supplying slaves to other countries.
(HN, 3/22/01)(MC, 3/22/02)
1794 May, Richard Allen
purchased a blacksmith shop in Philadelphia and had it moved near
St. Thomas. There he founded an African Methodist Episcopal (AME)
church he called Bethel, "House of God." The Mother Bethel African
Methodist Episcopal Church in Philadelphia was founded by Richard
Allen after he was pulled from his knees one Sunday by a white usher
while praying at St. George Methodist Episcopal Church. It later
stood as the oldest parcel of land continuously owned by African
Americans. The Richard Allen Museum contains 19th century artifacts
from the church. In 1997 it was the world’s oldest AME church. The
church elected its first female bishop in 2000.
(SFC, 6/24/96, p.A19)(SFC, 7/12/00,
p.A3)(www.pbs.org)
1794 Jul 17, In Philadelphia
the African Episcopal Church of St. Thomas, one of the first black
churches in the country, opened its doors.
(www.pbs.org)
1795 Feb 4, France abolished
slavery in her territories and conferred slaves to citizens.
(HN, 2/4/99)
1797 Mar 4, Vice-President John
Adams, elected President on December 7, to replace George
Washington, was sworn in. Adams soon selected Timothy Pickering as
his secretary of state. Pickering extended aid to Haitian slaves in
their ongoing revolt against French colonists. This policy was
reversed under Jefferson.
(HN, 3/4/99)(SSFC, 11/2/03, p.M6)
1798 May 2, The black General
Toussaint L'Ouverture forced British troops to agree to evacuate the
port of Santo Domingo.
(HN, 5/2/99)
1799 Mar 28, NY state abolished
slavery.
(MC, 3/28/02)
1800 Jan 30, US population was
reported at 5,308,483; Black population 1,002,037 (18.9%).
(MC, 1/30/02)
1800 May 9, John Brown,
American abolitionist, was born. His adventures came to an end at
Harper's Ferry, where he tried to start a revolution against
slavery.
(HN, 5/9/99)
1800 Oct 2, Nat Turner, slave
and the property of Benjamin Turner, was born in Southampton county,
Va. He was sold in 1831 to Joseph Travis from Jerusalem, Southampton
county, Va.
(www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part3/3p1518.html)
1801 Jan 28, Francis Barber
(ca. 1735 – 1801), the Jamaican manservant of Samuel Johnson
(1752-1784), died at the Staffordshire General Infirmary.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Barber)(http://tinyurl.com/2njdfy)
1802 Aug 7, Napoleon ordered
the re-instatement of slavery on St. Domingue (Haiti).
(MC, 8/7/02)
1803 The Pinkster Ode was
Dedicated To Carolus Africanus, Rex: Thus Rendered in English: King
Charles, Capital-General and Commander in Chief of the Pinkster Boys
in Albany, NY. Despite Pinkster’s Dutch origins, Africans in New
York and New Jersey were so successful at incorporating their own
cultures into the celebration that by the early 1800s Pinkster was
actually considered an African-American holiday.
(www.nysm.nysed.gov/albany/res/pinkster.html)
1804 Jan 5, Ohio legislature
passed the 1st laws restricting free blacks movement. [see Mar 28]
(MC, 1/5/02)
1804 Feb 15, New Jersey became
the last northern state to abolish slavery.
(HN, 2/15/98)
1804 Mar 28, Ohio passed law
restricting movement of Blacks. [see Jan 5]
(MC, 3/28/02)
1804 Jul 21, Victor Schoelcher,
abolished French slavery, was born in Guadeloupe.
(MC, 7/21/02)
1804 A motion in British
Parliament for abolition of the slave trade passed in the House of
Commons 124 to 29, but was defeated in the House of Lords.
(ON, 4/05, p.2)
1805 May 1, The state of
Virginia passed a law requiring all freed slaves to leave the state,
or risk either imprisonment or deportation.
(HN, 5/1/99)
1805 The slave ship Tryal,
under Captain Don Benito Cereno, was taken over in a slave
insurrection led by a man named Babo. The rebellion failed and the
slaves were tried and executed in Concepcion, Chile. In 1854 Herman
Melville’s authored his novella “Benito Cereno,” based on the Tryal
revolt. In 2014 Greg Grandin authored “The Empire of Necessity:
Slavery, Freedom and Deception in the New World,” also covering the
Tryal story.
(SSFC, 1/26/14, p.F3)
1806 Jun 10, James Fox, British
foreign minister, introduced a bill to ban British ships from
transporting slaves to foreign countries. Parliament passed the
bill.
(ON, 4/05, p.3)
1806 Dec 6, The African Meeting
House was dedicated in Boston. It was later used by Frederick
Douglass and other prominent abolitionists to rail against slavery.
In 1974 it was named as a National History Landmark. In 2011 a $9
million restoration was completed.
(SFC, 11/28/11,
p.A5)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_Meeting_House)
1807 Jan 2, Lord Grenville
presented to British Parliament a “Bill for the Abolition of the
Slave Trade,” effective May 1. He introduced it directly to the
House of Lords. It passed the House of Lords by 64 votes and cleared
the House of Commons on March 25.
(ON, 4/05, p.3)
1807 Mar 2, Congress banned
slave trade effective January 1, 1808. The further importation of
slaves was abolished but an inter-American slave trade continued.
(V.D.-H.K.p.276)(WSJ, 12/16/97, p.A18)(WSJ,
10/19/98, p.A24)(SC, 3/2/02)
1807 Mar 25, William
Wilberforce (1759-1833), evangelical member of parliament, piloted a
slave-trade abolition bill through the House of Commons. This led to
a labor problem in South Africa. In 1833 Britain abolished slavery
throughout the British Empire when the Slavery Abolition Bill was
read a third time
(HN, 3/24/98)(WSJ, 5/26/04,
p.A8)(www.anti-slaverysociety.addr.com/huk-wilberforce.htm)
1807 After Britain outlawed the
slave trade people called “Recaptives,” those freed from slave
ships, were sent to join the settlers in Sierra Leone. The settlers
formed a new tribe called the Kri and created a language called
Krio.
(MT, summer 2003, p.8)
1808 Jan 1, A law banning the
import of slaves came into effect, but was widely ignored.
(HN, 1/1/99)
1811 Jan 8, Charles Deslondes
led several hundred poorly armed slaves towards New Orleans in the
largest slave rebellion in US history.
(AH, 2/06, p.14)
1811 Jan 10, An uprising of
over 400 slaves was put down in New Orleans. Sixty-six blacks were
killed and their heads were strung up along the roads of the city.
(HN, 1/10/99)
1811-1843 Some 500,000 slaves arrived at Valongo,
Brazil’s main landing stage for African slaves. This port area of
Rio de Janeiro was re-discovered in 2010 as the city prepared for
the 2016 Olympics.
(Econ, 1/28/12, p.35)
1813 Jul 6, Granville Sharp
(b.1735), biblical scholar and English abolitionist, died.
(ON, 12/08,
p.9)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Granville_Sharp)
1814 Aug 13, Treaty of
London-Netherland was signed to stop the transport of slaves. By
agreement Britain paid the Dutch £6 million in compensation for the
Cape of Good Hope. [see May 30]
(EWH, 4th ed, p.884)(MC, 8/13/02)
1817 Feb 14, Frederick Douglass
(d.1895), "The Great Emancipator," was born in Maryland as Frederick
Augustus Washington Bailey. He was the son of a slave and a white
father who bought his own freedom and published “The Narrative Life
of Frederick Douglass” (1845) a memoir of his life as a slave. "The
life of the nation is secure only while the nation is honest,
truthful, and virtuous."
(AHD, 1971, p.394)(HN, 2/14/99)(AP, 2/20/99)(ON,
12/09, p.12)
1818 Feb 11, In Louisiana sugar
plantation owner Levi Foster sold to his in-laws the slaves named
Kit (28) for $975 and Alick (9) for $400. In 2000 Gwendolyn Midlo
Hall and LSU Press published a CD-ROM database on Louisiana slave
transactions: "Databases for the Study of Afro-Louisiana History and
Genealogy, 1699-1860: Computerized Information from Original
Manuscript Sources."
(SFEC, 7/30/00, p.)(www.afrigeneas.com)
1820 Feb 6, The American
Colonization Society sent its 1st organized emigration of blacks
back to Africa from NY to Sierra Leone.
(AH, 2/05, p.17)
1820 Feb 6, US population
announced at 9,638,453 including 1,771,656 blacks (18.4%).
(MC, 2/6/02)
1820 Mar 3, The Missouri
Compromise was passed by Congress. It allowed Missouri to enter the
Union as a slave state and Maine to enter as a free state. [see Mar
6]
(PCh, 1992, p.389)(SC, 3/3/02)
1820 May 15, The US Congress
designated the slave trade to a form of piracy.
(HN, 5/15/99)
1821 Mar 14, African Methodist
Episcopal Zion Church founded in NY.
(MC, 3/14/02)
1821 Jun 21, African Methodist
Episcopal Zion (AMEZ) Church was organized in NYC as a national
body. [see Mar 14]
(MC, 6/21/02)
1822 Feb 4, Free American
Blacks settled Liberia, West Africa. The first group of colonists
landed in Liberia and founded Monrovia, the colony's capital city,
named in honor of President James Monroe.
(HNPD, 7/26/98)(MC, 2/4/02)
1822 Jun 16, Denmark Vessy led
a slave rebellion in South Carolina. [see Jul 2]
(MC, 6/16/02)
1822 Jun 18, Slave revolt
leaders Denmark Vesey [Vessey] and Peter Poyas were arrested in SC.
(MC, 6/18/02)
1822 Jul 2, Denmark Vesey was
executed in Charleston, South Carolina, for planning a massive slave
revolt.
(HN, 7/2/01)
1823 John Rankin, Presbyterian
minister, moved to Ripley, Ohio, and soon established the Ripley
Line of the underground railroad. In 2003 Ann Hagedorn authored
"Beyond the River: The Untold Story of the Heroes of the Underground
Railroad." In 2005 Fergus M. Bordewich authored “Bound for Canaan,”
a look at the people involved in the UR operations.
(WSJ, 1/30/03, p.D8)(WSJ, 3/29/05, p.D6)
1824 Aug 15, Freed American
slaves formed the country of Liberia.
(MC, 8/15/02)
1827 Jan 15, At Monticello,
Va., 130 slaves and other possessions of Thomas Jefferson were sold
at auction. Sally Hemmings and 5 members of the Hemings family were
freed shortly thereafter.
(SFEC, 5/16/99, p.A9)
1827 Mar 16, The first
Afro-American newspaper edited for and by blacks, Freedom's Journal,
was published in New York City.
(HFA, '96, p.26)(AP, 3/16/97)
1827 Jul 4, New York state law
emancipated adult slaves.
(SFEC, 12/1/96, BR p.5)(Maggio, 98)
1827 Aug 10, There were race
riots in Cincinnati and some 1,000 blacks left for Canada.
(MC, 8/10/02)
1829 Jul 4, In Boston, Mass.,
abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison (1805-1879) gave a passionate
antislavery sermon at the Park Street Church and was attacked by a
white supremacist mob who dragged him from the pulpit and beat him
nearly to death. Garrison published the anti-slavery newspaper, the
Liberator, from 1831-1865.
(www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4p1561.html)(AH,
10/07, p.72)
1830 Sep 20, The National Negro
Convention convened in Philadelphia with the purpose of abolishing
slavery.
(HN, 9/20/98)
1831 Jan 1, William Lloyd
Garrison (1805-1879), 24-year-old reformer of Massachusetts, began
publishing his newspaper The Liberator, dedicated to the abolition
of slavery. Garrison's stridency and uncompromising position on both
the institution of slavery and slave owners offended many in the
North and South, but he vowed to continue the fight until slavery
was abolished. In the first issue of his newspaper, he wrote, "I am
aware that many object to the severity of my language; but is there
not cause for severity? I will be as harsh as truth, and as
uncompromising as justice. On this subject I do not wish to think,
or speak, or write, with moderation. No! No!" Garrison once burned a
copy of the U.S. Constitution, condemning it as "a covenant with
death and an agreement with hell" because it did not forbid slavery.
The Liberator ceased publication in 1865 after the 13th Amendment
was passed, outlawing slavery. [see 1830]
(HNPD, 12/31/98)
1831 Aug 21-22, Nat Turner led
a rebellion in Southampton county, Va. This became known as "Nat
Turner's Rebellion" or the "Southampton Slave Revolt." Turner and
about seven followers murdered 55 white people, including the entire
family of his owners, the Joseph Travis's. Turner had been taught to
read by the Travis children and his studies of the bible led him to
have visions of insurrection. A 1998 play by Robert O’Hara
"Insurrection: Holding History" centered on the event.
(www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part3/3p1518.html)(SFC,
1/16/98, p.D1)
1831 Oct 31, Nat Turner, rebel
slave, was caught by Mr. Benjamin Phipps and locked up in Jerusalem,
Va. Thomas Gray, his court appointed attorney, spent 3 days talking
to Turner and compiled his notes into "The Confessions of Nat
Turner," which were published in 1969.
(ON, 10/99, p.10)
1831 Nov 5, Nat Turner, rebel
slave, was tried in Southampton county, Va.
(www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part3/3p1518.html)
1831 Nov 11, Nat Turner was
hanged and skinned in Southampton county, Va. Hysteria surrounded
this rebellion and over 200 slaves, some as far away as North
Carolina, were murdered by whites in fear of a generalized uprising.
A martyr to the anti-slavery cause, Turner's actions had the adverse
effect of virtually ending all abolitionist activities in the south
before the Civil War.
(www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part3/3p1518.html)(HN,
11/11/98)
1833 Jun 16, Lucie (Ruthy)
Blackburn (30), a fugitive slave, escaped from jail in Detroit and
made her way to Canada. The next day a riot erupted, “The Blackburn
Riots,” as her husband, Thornton Blackburn (21), was escorted for
return to slavery. Thornton escaped to Canada to join his wife. The
first extradition case between the US and Canada over the issue of
fugitive slaves soon followed. Canada ruled it could not extradite
people to a jurisdiction that imposed harsher penalties then they
would have received for the same offense in Canada and the
Blackburns remained in Ontario.
(AH, 4/07, p.43)
1833 Jul 29, William
Wilberforce (b.1759), English abolitionist, died. He was best known
for his efforts relating to the abolition of slavery in the British
Empire. A politician and philanthropist, Wilberforce was prominent
from 1787 in the struggle to abolish the slave trade and slavery
itself in British overseas possessions. He was an ardent and
eloquent sponsor of anti-slavery legislation in the House of Commons
until his retirement in 1825. Wilberforce University in Ohio, an
African Methodist Episcopal Church institution (f.1856), was named
for William Wilberforce. In 2008 William Hague authored “William
Wilberforce: The Life of the Great Anti-Slave Trade Campaigner.” In
2010 Stephen Tomkins authored “The Clapham Sect: How Wilberforce’s
Circle Transformed Britain.”
(www.nndb.com/people/824/000049677/)(WSJ,
7/25/08, p.A13)(Econ, 8/28/10, p.74)
1833 Aug 23, The British
Parliament ordered the abolition of slavery in its colonies by Aug
1, 1834. This would free some 700,000 slaves, including those in the
West Indies. The Imperial Emancipation Act also allowed blacks to
enjoy greater equality under the law in Canada as opposed to the US.
Some 46,000 people were paid a total of 20 million pounds in
compensation for freeing their slaves.
(V.D.-H.K.p.276)(MT, 3/96, p.14)(PC, 1992,
p.412)(AH, 10/02, p.54)(SFC, 2/28/13, p.A2)
1833 Oct 2, The NY Anti-Slavery
Society was organized.
(MC, 10/2/01)
1833 Dec 4, American
Anti-Slavery Society was formed by Arthur Tappan in Phila.
(MC, 12/4/01)
1833 Richard Allen (73)
published his autobiography: "The Life, Experience, and Gospel
Labors of the Rt. Rev. Richard Allen."
(www.pbs.org)
1833 John Anderson, a
Kentucky-based slave trader, was one of 10 dealers who, during a
cholera epidemic, petitioned to move the Natchez, Miss., slave
market outside the city limits.
(WSJ, 12/2/04, p.D12)
1834 Jun 2, The 5th national
black convention met in NYC.
(SC, 6/2/02)
1834 Aug 1, England ended
slavery in the West Indies and all its Caribbean holdings effective
on this date. Slavery was abolished throughout the British Empire
with compensation to the owners. Some 35,000 salves were freed in
the Cape Colony. [see 1833]
(NH, 7/98, p.29)(HN, 8/1/98)(EWH, 4th ed, p.885)
1834-1861 The Citizens Bank of Louisiana, a
predecessor of J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., secured loans with
mortgages and thousands of slaves. Bernard de Marigny, plantation
owner and one of the richest men of the epoch, put 62 slaves into
the banks books as collateral for borrowed money to support his
gambling habit.
(WSJ, 5/10/05, p.A1)
1835 May 26, A resolution was
passed in the U.S. Congress stating that Congress has no authority
over state slavery laws.
(HN, 5/26/99)
1835 Aug 10, Mob of whites and
oxen pulled a black school to a swamp outside of Canaan, NH.
(MC, 8/10/02)
1835 Aug 31, Angry mob in
Charleston, South Carolina, seized U-S mail containing abolitionist
literature and burned it in public.
(MC, 8/31/01)
1836 Isaac Wade Ross,
Revolutionary war hero, died in Mississippi. His will stipulated
that his slaves should be emancipated upon his death, but only if
they agreed to go to Liberia. The 1st of almost 200 were finally set
free in 1848. In 2004 Alan Huffman authored "Mississippi in Africa:
The Saga of the Slaves of Prospect Hill Plantation and Their Legacy
in Liberia Today."
(SSFC, 2/1/04, p.M1)
1837 Mar 24, Canada gave blacks
the right to vote.
(http://www.bccns.com/d250/history.html)
1837 May 27, Legendary
gunfighter James Butler "Wild Bill" Hickok was born in Troy Grove,
IL. As a youth, Hickok helped his father operate an Underground
Railroad stop for runaway slaves and during the Civil War became a
daring Union scout. After the war Hickok's fame as a skilled
marksman, Indian fighter and frontier marshal grew, leading to a
stint as a featured attraction with Buffalo Bill Cody's Wild West
Show. On August 2, 1876, Hickok was shot from behind and killed
while playing poker in Saloon No. 10 in Deadwood, Dakota Territory.
Contrary to his custom, Hickok was sitting with his back to the
door.
(HNPD, 5/28/99)(MesWP)
1837 Nov 7, A mob attack on the
Alton, Illinois, office newspaper editor Elijah P. Lovejoy and the
subsequent killing of Lovejoy was inspired by the editor’s
anti-slavery writings. Several persons were indicted in the killing,
but they were found not guilty. Lovejoy was killed while defending a
newly arrived printing press. People opposed to Lovejoy‘s
mission had already destroyed three previous presses.
(HNQ, 3/18/99)(HNQ, 6/26/00)
1838 Frederick Augustus
Washington Bailey escaped from slavery in Maryland and traveled to
new England where he changed his name to Frederick Douglass.
(AHD, 1971, p.394)(ON, 7/02, p.6)
1839 Apr 5, Robert Smalls,
black congressman from South Carolina, 1875-87, was born.
(HN, 5/5/97)
1839 Jun 27, The Spanish
coasting vessel La Amistad (The Friendship) set sail from Cuba to
Porta Prince with a load of African slaves. Cinque, originally
Senghbe, and over 50 other Africans had been kidnapped in Sierra
Leone and sold into slavery in Cuba. They were carried on a Spanish
ship, the Tecora, to Cuba. Cinque and 49 other slaves and 4 children
were placed on the ship La Amistad destined for Haiti. They
revolted, killed the captain, and ordered the crew back to Africa
but the ship sailed north and ran aground. It was captured by the US
Navy on August 26. A legal battle ensued in New London, Conn., that
went to the Supreme court where former Pres. John Quincy Adams
argued for their freedom and won. An 1855 novella by Herman
Melville, "Benito Cereno" looked at the rebellion through the eyes
of an American interloper. Barbara Chase-Ribaud later wrote "Echo of
Lions," a novel based on the Amistad. In 1996 Steven Spielberg
announced plans to direct a film based on the incident titled
"Amistad." The film was to be released in 1997. A 1997 opera
production, "Amistad," by Anthony Davis premiered in Chicago.
(http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/amistad/AMI_BCIN.HTM)(SFEC,10/26/97,
DB p.57)(USAT, 11/19/97, p.2D)(WSJ, 12/5/97, p.A16)(SFEC,12/797, DB
p.44)(SFC,12/26/97, p.C6)(HN, 6/28/99)
1839 Jul 2, African slaves, led
by Joseph Cinque, killed Ramon Ferrer, and took possession of his
ship, La Amistad. Cinque ordered the navigator to take them back to
Africa but after 63 days at sea the ship was intercepted by
Lieutenant Gedney, of the United States brig Washington, half a mile
from the shore of Long Island.
(www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/Scinque.htm)
1839 Aug 26, The slave ship La
Amistad was captured off Long Island. The USS Washington, an
American Navy brig, seized the Amistad, and escorted it to New
London, Connecticut.
(http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/amistad/AMI_BCIN.HTM)
1839 Jacob D. Green (b.1813), a
slave in Queen Anne’s County, Md., escaped from the plantation of
Judge Charles Earle after his wife and 2 children were sold in his
absence. In 1842 he was caught and returned to Judge Earle, who sold
him to a new master in Tennessee. Green escaped and was captured a
few more times before he finally reached Canada. In 1851 he
emigrated to England and in 1964 published a 43-page account of his
adventures.
(ON, 7/05, p.11)
1840 The US state of Georgia by
this time had over 280,000 slaves with many working as field hands.
By the start of Civil War slaves made up over 40% of the
state’s population.
(SFC, 1/4/11, p.E2)
1841 Mar 1, John Quincy Adams
(74), former US president, concluded his defense of "the Mendi
people," a group of Africans who had rebelled and killed the crew of
the slave ship Amistad, while enroute from Cuba to Haiti. They faced
mutiny charges upon landing on Long Island, but Adams won their
acquittal before the Supreme Court. In thanks they bestowed to him
an 1838 English Bible. In 1996 the Bible was stolen from the Adams
National Historic Site in Quincy, Mass.
(http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/amistad/adamsarg.html)(WSJ,
1/3/97, p.A7)
1841 Mar 9, The rebel slaves
who seized a Spanish slave ship, the Amistad, two years earlier were
freed by the US Supreme Court despite Spanish demands for
extradition.
(WSJ, 1/3/97, p.A7)(HN, 3/9/99)
1841 Apr 3, From Nassau,
Bahamas, a British magistrate wrote that 193 shipwrecked African
slaves from the ship Trouvadore were found naked on the shores of
the East Caicos Island. The slaves were then quarantined in a jail
and given food and clothing. The accident set free the slaves who
became ancestors of many later residents of the islands. In 2004 the
wreck was found and in 2008 marine archaeologists identified it as
the remains of the slave ship.
(AP, 8/21/04)(AP, 11/26/08)
1841 Nov, Freed African
survivors of the slave ship Amistad returned to Sierra Leone,
Africa. Abolitionists had raised money to help the freed slaves of
the Amistad return home. When Cinque, the leader of the revolt,
reached home, he found that his family had been captured and sold
into slavery.
(http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/amistad/AMI_CHR.HTM)(SFEC,12/797,
DB p.44)
1841 William A. Leidesdorff,
originally from the Virgin Islands, arrived in San Francisco. He
became a prominent businessman, built the city’s first hotel, became
a member of the first SF City Council and served as the city’s first
treasurer.
(SFC, 2/16/09, p.B2)
1842 Nov 17, A grim
abolitionist meeting was held in Marlboro Chapel, Boston, after the
imprisonment under the Fugitive Slave Bill (1793) of a mulatto named
George Latimer, one of the first fugitive slaves to be apprehended
in Massachusetts. Four hundred dollars was collected to buy his
freedom, and plans to storm the jail were prepared as an alternative
to secure his release.
(HN, 11/17/98)
1843 Aug 15, A national black
convention met in Buffalo, NY.
(MC, 8/15/02)
1843 Norbert Rillieux
(1806-1894) received US patent # 3,237 for a double-effect
evaporator, while overseeing the building of the device for
plantation owner Theodore Packwood.
(www.answers.com/topic/norbert-rillieux)
1844 May 2, Elijah McCoy, black
inventor, held over 50 patents, was born.
(MC, 5/2/02)
1845 Frederick Douglass,
African-American statesman, published “The Narrative Life of
Frederick Douglass.” He then traveled to Ireland where he received a
hero’s welcome. Irish nationalist Daniel O’Connell saw common cause
between Ireland’s quest for self-rule and the plight of American
slaves. British admirers raised money to buy his freedom and he was
officially manumitted after Hugh Auld, his alleged owner, received a
payment of $711.66.
(WSJ, 3/13/09, p.W2)(ON, 12/09, p.12)
1846 Dec 10, Norbert Rillieux
(1806-1894), African-American engineer, received a patent for the
Rillieux Process for refining sugar. He won several patents for a
way to refine sugar in a process that later came to be called
multiple-effect distillation.
(Econ, 6/7/08,
p.24)(www.aalbc.com/books/black7.htm)
1847 Dec 3, Frederick Douglass
and Martin R. Delaney established the North Star, an anti-slavery
paper.
(HN, 12/3/98)
1848 Feb 15, Sarah Roberts was
barred from a white school in Boston.
(440 Int’l., 2/15/99)
1848 Apr 27, Slave trade was
abolished in the French colonies.
(AFP, 3/24/10)
1848 Apr 28, The last slaves in
French colonies were freed.
(MC, 4/28/02)
1848 Jul 3, The slaves were
freed in Danish West Indies (now US Virgin Islands).
(MC, 7/3/02)
1849 Feb, Thomas Carlyle
(1795-1881), Scottish essayist, anonymously authored the article:
"Occasional Discourse on the Negro Question," in which he 1st used
the phrase "the dismal science" to describe political economics: It
is “not a gay science… no, a dreary, desolate, and indeed quite
abject and distressing one; what we might call, by way of eminence,
the dismal science." Carlyle himself argued in this essay for the
reintroduction of slavery into the West Indies. In 2001 David M.
Levy authored "How the Dismal Science Got Its Name."
(WSJ, 12/10/01,
p.A15)(http://cepa.newschool.edu/het/texts/carlyle/carlodnq.htm)
1850 Mar 31, The US population
hit 23,191,876, with the Black population at 3,638,808 (15.7%).
(MC, 3/31/02)
1850 Sep 18, The US Congress
passed the second Fugitive Slave Bill into law (the first was
enacted in 1793) as part of Compromise of 1850. It allowed slave
owners to reclaim slaves who had escaped to other states. The
Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 set fines up to $1,000 for facilitating a
slave’s flight. The act authorized federal commissioners to receive
a $10 fee if they decided for a slaveholder, but only a $5 fee for
deciding for a fugitive.
(AP, 9/18/97)(HN, 9/18/98)(WSJ, 1/30/03,
p.D8)(AH, 10/02, p.53)
1850 Sep 20, The slave trade in
Washington, D.C., was abolished as a provision of Henry Clay’s
Compromise of 1850. Because each state had its own slavery code when
the District of Columbia was founded in 1800, Washington had adopted
Maryland’s laws. Although the 1850 legislation made the slave trade
illegal, slavery itself was still legal. Nevertheless, Washington
became a haven for free blacks. By 1860, free blacks outnumbered
slaves almost four-to-one. President Abraham Lincoln put an end to
Washington’s slavery altogether in 1862, freeing about 2,989 African
Americans who were then slaves according to the slavery code.
(HNPD, 9/20/98)(HN, 9/20/98)
1850 In the Netherlands Zwarte
Piet (Black Pete), a Dutch version of St. Nicholas, made his debut
as an African servant in a book. By 2012 he was being described as a
racist caricature of a black person. In 2013 Amsterdam officials
were asked to revoke a permit for a children’s festival that
featured the caricature.
(AP, 12/4/12)(SFC, 10/18/12, p.A2)
1851 Jan 25, Sojourner Truth
addressed the 1st Black Women's Rights Convention in Akron. [see
May, 1851]
(MC, 1/25/02)
1851 Feb 15, Black
abolitionists invaded a Boston courtroom to rescue a fugitive slave.
(440 Int’l., 2/15/99)
1851 May, Freed slave and
abolitionist Sojourner Truth attended a national women's convention
in Akron, Ohio, where the female delegates were heckled by men in
the audience who claimed that men were superior to women. Frances
Gage, president of the convention, recorded Sojourner Truth's words
that day. "Dat man ober dar say dat women needs to be helped into
carriages and lifted ober ditches, and to hab de best place
everywhar. Nobody eber helps me into carriages, or ober mud-puddles,
or gibs me any best place! And ain't I a woman! Look at me! Look at
my arm! I have ploughed, and planted and gathered into barns, and no
man could head me! And ain't I a woman? I could work as much and eat
as much as a man--when I could get it--and bear de lash as well! And
ain't I a woman? I have borne thirteen chilern, and seen 'em mos'
all sold into slavery, and when I cried out with my mother's grief,
none but Jesus heard me! And ain't I a woman?" Sojourner Truth's
words, according to Gage, "turned the sneers and jeers of an excited
crowd into notes of respect and admiration."
(HN, 7/13/99)
1851 Jun 5, Harriet Beecher
Stow published the first installment of Uncle Tom’s Cabin in The
National Era.
(HN, 6/5/99)
1851 Sep 11, Edward Gorsuch, a
wealthy slave owner from Maryland, confronted William Parker and
accused him of harboring 4 runaway slaves near the abolitionist
town, Christiana, Pennsylvania. This was one year after the second
fugitive slave law (first law was on February 12, 1793) was passed
by Congress, requiring the return of all escaped slaves to their
owners in the South. Gorsuch was killed during the skirmish and
Parker was forced to flee to Canada.
(AH, 10/02, p.49)
1851 Dec 11, In Philadelphia 37
men, on trial in federal court for defying the Fugitive Slave Law,
were deemed not guilty by a jury with 15 minutes of deliberation.
(AH, 10/02, p.54)
1852 Mar 20, Harriet Beecher
Stowe's (1811-1896) "Uncle Tom's Cabin" was first published in book
form after being serialized. It was based on the theme that slavery
is incompatible with Christianity. In 2011 David S. Reynolds
authored “Mightier Than the Sword: Uncle Tom’s Cabin and the Battle
for America.”
(SFC, 3/30/97, Z1. p.6)(AP, 3/20/08)(SSFC,
7/3/11, p.G4)
1853 Apr 14, Harriet Tubman
began her Underground Railroad, helping slaves to escape.
(MC, 4/14/02)
1853 Solomon Northrup (b.1807)
and Henry W. Derbu authored "Twelve Years a Slave, Narrative of
Solomon Northrup, a Citizen of New York, Kidnapped in Washington in
1841, and Rescued in 1853 from a Cotton Plantation Near the Red
River in Louisiana." In 2013 Rachel Seligman, David Fiske and
Clifford authored “Solomon Northrup: The Complete Story of the
Author of Twelve Years a Slave.” A film based on the 1853 book
won the Best Picture Oscar in 2014.
(ON, 11/99, p.7)(SFC, 3/17/14, p.A8)
1853 In Boston Sarah Parker
Remond was thrown out of a theater for refusing to be seated in an
area reserved for blacks. She fell and filed suit and was awarded
monetary compensation. The theater was later desegregated.
(SFEC, 4/5/98, BR p.5)
1855 May 3, Macon B. Allen
became the first African American to be admitted to the Bar in
Massachusetts.
(HN, 5/3/99)
1856 Apr 5, Booker T.
Washington, Black American educator, was born in Franklin County,
Va. The former slave later founded the Tuskegee Institute. Booker
Taliaferro Washington later became the 1st black on US stamp.
(AP, 5/5/97)(HN, 4/5/99)(MC, 4/5/02)
1856 May 19, Senator Charles
Sumner spoke out against slavery.
(HN, 5/19/98)
1856 May 21, Lawrence, Kansas,
was captured and sacked by pro-slavery forces.
(HN, 5/21/98)
1856 May 24, The Potawatomi
Massacre took place in Kansas. John Brown, American abolitionist and
horse thief, presided over the hacking to death with machetes of
five unarmed pro-slavery Border Ruffians in Potawatomi, Kansas.
(WSJ, 4/10/95, A-16)(WSJ, 3/16/98, p.A20)(MC,
5/24/02)
1856 James Pierson Beckwourth
(1798-1866, a mountain man born as a slave, authored his
autobiography: “The Life and Adventures of James P. Beckwourth,
Mountaineer, Scout, and Pioneer, and Chief of the Crow Nation of
Indians.”
(SSFC, 7/18/04, p.14)(www.beckwourth.org/)
1857 Mar 6, After years in
litigation, the Supreme Court, headed by Chief Justice Roger Taney,
ruled that Dred Scott did not gain his freedom by living in a free
territory. The essence of the decision was that as a slave, Dred
Scott was not a citizen and therefore could not sue in a federal
court. The opinion also stated that Congress could not exclude
slavery in the territories and that blacks could not become
citizens. That ruling further increased the tension already
simmering between the North and the South. Dred Scott was a slave
who accompanied his owner, army surgeon John Emerson, to military
posts in Wisconsin and Illinois in 1834-35. In 1846 Scott, backed by
abolitionists, sued for his freedom on the grounds that he became
free when he lived in an area where slavery was outlawed. Montgomery
Blair (b.1813) was one of the lawyers in the Scott vs. Sanford case.
In this case the Supreme Court invalidated the 1820 Missouri
Compromise.
(AP, 3/6/98)(HN, 3/6/98)(HNPD, 3/11/99)(HN,
5/10/99)(SFC, 11/30/00, p.A3)
1857 The California Savings and
Land Association at 465 California St. was built. Henry Collins, one
of California’s wealthiest black leaders, served as president of the
first African-American owned bank in the country.
(www.afrigeneas.com/forum-west/index.cgi?md=read;id=43)(SFC,
2/16/09, p.B2)
1858 Mar 5, In San Francisco
advocates of civil rights rescued Archy Lee, a slave held by Charles
Stovall of Mississippi, from being taken from the city aboard the
ship Orizaba. The story was later told by Rudolph Lapp (1915-2007)
in “Archy Lee: A California Fugitive Slave Case” (1969).
(SFC, 1/11/14, p.C2)
1858 May 8, John Brown held an
antislavery convention.
(MC, 5/8/02)
1858 May 19, A pro-slavery band
led by Charles Hameton executed unarmed Free State men near Marais
des Cygnes on the Kansas-Missouri border.
(HN, 5/19/99)
1858 Jun 20, Charles Chesnutt,
African-American novelist, was born in Cleveland. In 2002 Werner
Sollors edited "Chesnutt: Stories, Novels, and Essays."
(HN, 6/20/01)(WSJ, 1/22/02, p.A11)
1858 Aug 24, Richmond "Daily
Dispatch" reported 90 blacks arrested for learning.
(MC, 8/24/02)
1859 Sep 5, Harriot E. Wilson's
“Our Nig,” was published, the first U.S. novel by an African
American woman.
(HN, 9/5/98)
1859 Pres. Buchanan ordered a
blockade of Cuba to intercept American-owned slave ships.
(SSFC, 2/8/04, p.C12)
1860 Feb 29, George Bridgetower
(b.1778), African-Polish violinist, died in Peckham, south London.
He was born in Biała, Poland, where his father worked for Hieronimus
Wincenty Radziwill. Bridgetower lived in England for much of his
life.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Bridgetower)
1860 William Craft authored
“Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom.” He and his wife Ellen had
escaped under disguise from Macon, Georgia, to Philadelphia in 1848.
(ON, 10/04, p.10)
1860 US sailors intercepted 3
American slave ships on their way to Cuba. The Wildfire, the William
and the Bogota carried some 1,432 African slaves from the area of
Benin and Congo to be sold in Cuba. The slaves were taken to Key
West for 3 months and then returned to Africa.
(SSFC, 2/8/04, p.C12)
1860 The total value of US
slaves was $3.5 billion, the equivalent of $68.4 billion in 2006.
The US gross national product was only about 20% above the value of
the nation’s slaves.
(WSJ, 3/24/06, p.W4)
1860 The number of slaves in
Mississippi numbered over 400,000.
(Econ, 2/13/10, p.85)
1861 Jan 25, Pres. Lincoln
picked Ferdinand Schavers, a black man, as his first bodyguard.
(Hem., 5/97, p.18)(WSJ, 9/19/97, p.A13)
1861 Feb 11, The US House
unanimously passed a resolution guaranteeing noninterference with
slavery in any state.
(MC, 2/11/02)
1861 Mar 13, Jefferson Davis
signed a bill authorizing slaves to be used as soldiers for the
Confederacy.
(HN, 3/13/98)
1861 Mar 27, Black
demonstrators in Charleston staged ride-ins on street cars.
(MC, 3/27/02)
1861 May 24, General Benjamin
Butler, Union commander of Fort Monroe, Va., declared slaves to be
the contraband of war in order to avoid returning them to their
owners under the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act.
(ON, 2/12,
p.1)(www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Butler_Benjamin_F_1818-1893)
1861 Sep 17, Mary Smith Peake,
the daughter of a white Englishman and a free woman of color, began
teaching the runaway slaves under an oak tree near Fort Monroe, Va.,
thus founding the first American school for freed slaves. The tree
became known as the Emancipation Oak after Pres. Lincoln’s
Emancipation Proclamation was read there in 1863.
(ON, 2/12, p.2)
1861 Dec 5, In the U.S.
Congress, petitions and bills calling for the abolition of slavery
were introduced.
(HN, 12/5/98)
1861 Harriet Jacobs (1813-1897)
authored “Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl” under the pseudonym
Linda Brent. Jacobs grew up in North Carolina and later escaped to
NY. In 2004 Jean Fagan Yellin (73) authored “Harriet Jacobs: A
Life.”
(SFC, 6/23/04, p.E1)
1861 Samuel F.B. Morse,
inventor of the telegraph, authored a pamphlet titled: "An Argument
on the Ethical Position of Slavery in the Social System."
(WSJ, 10/28/03, p.D10)
1862 Feb 22, Mary Smith Peake
(1823-1862), American teacher and humanitarian, died of
tuberculosis. She is best known for teaching runaway slaves under an
oak tree, the Emancipation Oak, near Fort Monroe, Va.
(ON, 2/12,
p.2)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_S._Peake)
1862 Mar 8, Nat Gordon, last
pirate, was hanged in NYC for stealing 1,000 slaves.
(MC, 3/8/02)
1862 Mar 13, The US Congress
passed a bill prohibiting the military from returning slaves to
their masters.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Act_Prohibiting_the_Return_of_Slaves)
1862 Mar 24, Abolitionist
Wendell Phillips spoke to a crowd about emancipation in Cincinnati,
Ohio and was pelted by eggs.
(HN, 3/24/00)
1862 Apr 3, A bill was passed
to abolish slavery in Washington, D.C. [see Apr 16]
(HN, 4/3/98)
1862 Apr 12, Union Gen. David
Hunter (1802-1886) formed the first official African-American
regiment during the Civil War. The First South Carolina Volunteer
Infantry was first organized in the Department of the South by Gen.
David Hunter at Hilton Head, SC, in May of 1862.
(AH, 4/07,
p.14)(http://johnib.wordpress.com/category/abraham-lincoln/)
1862 Apr 16, President Lincoln
signed a bill, passed on April 3, ending slavery in the District of
Columbia.
(HN, 4/16/98)(AP, 4/16/08)
1862 Jul 16, Ida Bell Wells,
first president of the American Negro League, was born.
(HN, 7/16/98)
1862 Jul 16, Two Union soldiers
and their servant ransacked a house and raped a slave in
Sperryville, Virginia.
(HN, 7/16/99)
1862 Jul 17, US army was
authorized to accept blacks as laborers.
(MC, 7/17/02)
1862 Aug 25, US Secretary of
War authorized Gen. Rufus Saxton to arm 5,000 slaves.
(chblue.com, 8/25/01)
1862 Sep, Pres. Lincoln warned
the South that he would free all slaves in Southern territory if the
rebellion continued. Unlike some others, Lincoln always promoted a
voluntary colonization, rather than forcing blacks to leave. In 2011
the book "Colonization After Emancipation," by Philip Magness and
Sebastian Page made the case that Lincoln was even more committed to
colonizing blacks than previously known.
(AP, 3/4/11)
1862 Pres. Lincoln spoke
to a White House audience of free blacks, urging them to leave the
US and settle in Central America.
(AP, 3/4/11)
1862 Mary Jane Patterson
(1840-1894) received a degree from Oberlin College, Ohio, becoming
the 1st black female college graduate in the US.
(SSFC, 2/15/04, p.C6)
1863 Jan 31, The 1st South
Carolina Volunteers, later called the 33rd U.S. Colored Troops was
officially recognized. Components of the regiment had been in
training since early 1962.
(Smith., 4/95, p.14)(MC, 1/31/02)
1863 Mar 26, Voters in West
Virginia approved the gradual emancipation of slaves.
(SS, 3/26/02)
1863 May 1, Confederate
congress passed a resolution to kill black Union soldiers.
(HN, 5/1/98)
1863 May 22, The US War Dept.
established the Bureau of Colored Troops.
(MC, 5/22/02)
1863 May 28, The 54th
Massachusetts, the first black regiment from the North, left Boston
headed for Hilton Head, South Carolina, to fight in the Civil War.
(AP, 5/28/97)(HN, 5/28/99)
1863 Sep 23, Mary Church
Terrell, educator, political activist, and first president of the
National Association of Colored Women, was born in Memphis,
Tennessee. An 1884 graduate of Oberlin College, America's first
college to admit women and amongst the first to admit students of
all races, Terrell was one of the first American women of African
descent to graduate from college. She earned her master's degree
from Oberlin in 1888.
(http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/today/today.html)
1863 Pres. Lincoln granted a
British agent permission to recruit volunteers for a Belize colony.
(AP, 3/4/11)
1863 Abraham Lincoln sent 450
newly freed slaves to Haiti’s Ile-à-Vache to found a colony, though
most gave up and returned home a year later.
(Reuters, 4/6/14)
1864 Jan 10, George Washington
Carver (d.1943), American botanist and a former slave who became a
scientist and inventor, gave the world peanut butter, was born.
"Ninety-nine percent of the failures come from people who have the
habit of making excuses."
(AP, 9/20/98)(HN, 1/10/99)
1864 Feb 21, The 1st US
Catholic parish church for blacks was dedicated in Baltimore.
(MC, 2/21/02)
1864 Mar 1, Rebecca Lee
(1831-1895) became the first black woman to receive an American
medical degree, from the New England Female Medical College in
Boston.
(AP,
3/1/00)(www.nlm.nih.gov/changingthefaceofmedicine/physicians/biography_73.html)
1864 Missionaries settled in
Zanzibar following a call by David Livingstone for volunteers to
fight the slave trade and help spread Christianity across Africa.
(SSFC, 6/9/02, p.C13)
1865 Jan 31, The House of
Representatives approved a constitutional amendment (121-24)
abolishing slavery. It would become the 13th amendment to the US
Constitution. It was ratified on December 6.
(www.loc.gov/rr/program/bib/ourdocs/13thamendment.html)(WSJ,
7/16/01, p.A10)
1865 Feb 1, Lincoln's home
state of Illinois became the first to ratify the Thirteenth
Amendment abolishing slavery throughout the United States. President
Abraham Lincoln had issued the Emancipation Proclamation two years
earlier, but it had not effectively abolished slavery in all of the
states--it did not apply to slave-holding border states that had
remained with the Union during the Civil War. After the war, the
sentiment about blacks was mixed even among anti-slavery Americans:
some considered Lincoln's address too conservative and pushed for
black suffrage, arguing that blacks would remain oppressed by their
former owners if they did not have the power to vote. After the
amendment was passed, the Freedmen's Bureau was created to help
blacks with the problems they would encounter while trying to
acquire jobs, education and land of their own.
(HNPD, 2/1/99)
1865 Feb 8, Martin Robinson
Delany became the 1st black major in US army.
(MC, 2/8/02)
1865 Feb 12, Henry Highland
Garnet, became the 1st black to speak in US House of Reps.
(MC, 2/12/02)
1865 Mar 2, Freedman's Bureau
was founded for Black Education.
(SC, 3/2/02)
1865 Mar 3, US Bureau of
Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands was established to help
destitute free blacks.
(SC, 3/3/02)
1865 Mar 4, President Lincoln
was inaugurated for his 2nd term as President. It was held at the
Patent Office, the site of a military hospital. Four companies of
African-American troops and lodges of African-American Masons and
African-American Odd-Fellows joined the procession to the Capitol.
(WSJ, 2/12/04, p.D12)(SSFC, 1/20/13, Par p.4)
1865 Apr 23, Dedicated
Massachusetts abolitionist Silas Soule (b.1838) was shot and
killed near his home in Colorado by a soldier named Charles
Squires. It is thought that Squires was hired by men loyal to Col.
John Chivington to kill Soule. Soule's testimony against Chivington
about the 1864 massacre at Sand Creek led, in part, the United
States Congress to refuse the Army's request for thousands of men
for a general war against the Native Americans of the Plains States.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silas_Soule)
1865 Jun 19, Emancipation Day,
also known as Juneteenth, was the day that Union General Granger
informed Texas slaves that they were free. Blacks came to celebrate
the day as Juneteenth Freedom Day.
(SFEC, 6/21/98, p.D3)(SFC, 6/18/04, p.B2)
1865 Dec 18 The Thirteenth
Amendment to the US Constitution, abolishing slavery, was declared
in effect.
(V.D.-H.K.p.276)(AP, 12/18/07)
1866 Apr 9, A Civil Rights Bill
passed over Pres Andrew Johnson's veto.
(MC, 4/9/02)
1866 Aug 8, African-American
Matthew Alexander Henson was born in Maryland. He and four Inuits
accompanied U.S. Naval Commander Robert E. Peary when he planted the
U.S. flag at the North Pole on April 6, 1909. Henson became an
Arctic expert during Peary's first two failed expeditions. By the
third attempt, which began in July 1908, Henson's strength,
knowledge of the Eskimo language and dog driving skills made him an
essential member of the team. Whether Peary's party actually reached
the North Pole or missed it by as much as 60 miles due to a
navigational miscalculation remains controversial to this day.
(HNPD, 8//99)(Internet)
1866 Sep 6, Frederick Douglass
became the 1st US black delegate to a national convention.
(MC, 9/6/01)
1866 Mary Ellen Pleasant was
kicked off a streetcar in San Francisco and began arguing against
laws prohibiting black people from riding them.
(SFC, 2/16/09, p.B2)
1866-1886 Dr. John Kirk, a Scottish botanist,
served as the British representative on the island of Zanzibar. He
made great effort to abolish the local slave trade. In 2011 Alastair
Hazell authored “The Last Slave Market: Dr John Kirk and the
Struggle to End the African slave Trade.
(Econ, 8/6/11, p.72)
1867 Jan 8, Legislation gave
suffrage to DC blacks, despite Pres. Johnson's veto.
(MC, 1/8/02)
1867 Apr 1, Blacks voted
in the municipal election in Tuscumbia, Alabama.
(OTD)
1867 Apr 24, Black
demonstrators staged ride-ins on Richmond, Va., streetcars.
(MC, 4/24/02)
1867 May 1, Reconstruction in
the South began with black voter registration.
(HN, 5/1/98)
1867 Sep 13, Gen. E.R.S. Canby
ordered South Carolina courts to impanel blacks as jurors.
(MC, 9/13/01)( www.tsha.utexas.edu)
1868 Jul 28, The 14th Amendment
to the Constitution, guaranteeing due process of law, was certified
in effect by Secretary of State William H. Seward. It gave freed
slaves full citizenship and equal protection under the laws, however
it did not spell out the extent of integration with white America.
Framers expected the amendment’s Privileges or Immunities clause
would protect US citizens’ rights against state infringement..
(www.americaslibrary.gov/cgi-bin/page.cgi/jb/recon/revised_1)(AP,
7/28/08)(WSJ, 3/14/09, p.W3)
1868 Nov 24, Scott Joplin was
born in Texas. By the time he was a teenager, Joplin could play the
banjo and the piano, and had begun to work as a saloon musician. In
the late 1890s, he was performing and composing at the Maple Leaf
Club in Sedalia, Missouri, and in 1899 his "Maple Leaf Rag" made
ragtime popular. Ragtime was a mixture of classical European and
African-American styles of music, and it influenced the later
development of jazz. Joplin was not considered a serious composer
until ragtime resurfaced in the 1970s, when his composition "The
Entertainer" was the theme to the movie The Sting. The first grand
opera composed by an African American was Joplin's Treemonisha
(1911), which was not very successful at the time. In 1976, however,
more than 50 years after Joplin died, Treemonisha won the Pulitzer
Prize.
(HNPD, 11/24/98)(WSJ, 7/5/00, p.A20)
1868 John Davidson and Franklin
Hargo became the 1st African American students admitted to the Univ.
of Michigan.
(LSA, Spring/04, p.53)
1869 Feb 20, Tenn. Gov. W.C.
Brownlow declared martial law in Ku Klux Klan crisis.
(MC, 2/20/02)
1869 Mar 3, University of South
Carolina opened to all races.
(SC, 3/3/02)
1869 Mar 13, Arkansas
legislature passed anti-Klan law.
(MC, 3/13/02)
1869 Apr 12, North Carolina
legislature passed an anti-Klan Law.
(MC, 4/12/02)
1869 Iowa’s Supreme Court
ordered the state’s schools to be desegregated..
(Econ, 4/11/09, p.31)
1870 Feb 3, 15th Amendment on
Black suffrage was passed. [see Mar 30]
(MC, 2/3/02)
1870 Feb 25, Hiram Revels
(Sen-R-MS) was sworn in as the 1st black member of Congress.
(MC, 2/25/02)
1870 Feb 26, Wyatt Outlaw,
black leader of Union League in North Carolina, was lynched.
(SC, 2/26/02)
1870 Apr 9, The American
Anti-Slavery Society dissolved.
(MC, 4/9/02)
1870 Aug 6, White conservatives
suppressed the black vote and captured Tenn. Legislature.
(MC, 8/6/02)
1870 Dec 12, Joseph H. Rainey
became the first black lawmaker sworn into the U.S. House of
Representatives. Rainey, a Republican from South Carolina, filled
the seat made vacant by the expulsion of Representative Benjamin F.
Whittemore. Rainey served for 10 years.
(AP, 12/12/97)(MC, 12/12/01)
1870 George Grant (d.1910)
became the 1st black graduate from Harvard Dental School. He got the
1st patent for a golf tee in 1899.
(ST, 2/20/04, p.C1)
1871 May 12, Segregated street
cars were integrated in Louisville, Ky.
(MC, 5/12/02)
1871 Nov 28, Ku Klux Klan
trials began in Federal District Court in SC.
(MC, 11/28/01)
1871 Brazil’s parliament passed
the law of free womb, which stated that children born to slave
mothers would not themselves be slaves.
(Econ, 12/21/13, p.52)
1872 May 10, Victoria Woodhull
became the first woman nominated for U.S. president. Thomas Nast
depicted her as "Mrs. Satan." Woodhull adhered to a diet prescribed
by Sylvester Graham, known for his ginger-colored crackers.
Sylvester preached against demon rum and died at age 57 after
administering himself a medicinal treatment with considerable
liquor. Frederick Douglas, African-American statesman, was nominated
as vice president on the Equal Rights Party ticket.
(SFEC, 3/8/98, Par p.14-16)(SFC, 10/17/98,
p.E5)(HN, 5/10/98)(WSJ, 3/13/09, p.W2)
1872 Dec 11, America's first
black governor took office as Pinckney Benton Stewart Pinchback
became acting governor of Louisiana.
(AP, 12/11/97)
1873 Mar 22, Slavery was
abolished in Puerto Rico.
(MC, 3/22/02)
1873 Jun 5, Sultan Bargash
closed the slave market of Zanzibar. Missionaries bought the site
and began building an Anglican cathedral.
(SSFC, 6/9/02, p.C13)(MC, 6/5/02)
1874 Mar 11, Charles Sumner
(63), a white civil rights leader, died.
(MC, 3/12/02)
1874 The California state
Supreme Court in Ward vs. Flood upheld a law authorizing racial
segregation in public schools.
(SSFC, 5/16/04, p.E5)
1875 Mar 1, Congress passed
the Civil Rights Act, which was invalidated by the Supreme Court in
1883.
(HN, 3/1/98)
1875 Jul 4, White Democrats
killed several blacks in terrorist attacks in Vicksburg, Miss.
(Maggio, 98)
1875 Jul 10, Mary McLeod
Bethune (d.1955), American educator, reformer and founder of the
Bethune-Cookman College in Florida and the National Council of Negro
Women, was born. "Invest in the human soul. Who knows, it might be a
diamond in the rough."
(AP, 7/9/97)(HN, 7/10/98)
1875 Aug 4, The first
Convention of Colored Newspapermen was held in Cincinnati, Ohio.
(HN, 8/4/98)
1876 Jul 8, White terrorists
attacked Black Republicans in Hamburg, SC, and killed 5.
(MC, 7/8/02)
1876 Sep 6, A race riot took
place in Charleston, SC.
(MC, 9/6/01)
1877 Aug 2, Sir James Douglas
(b.1803), the first provincial governor of British Columbia
(1858-1864), died. He was the son of a black woman from Barbados and
a Scottish planter.
(SFC, 2/12/10, p.A18)
1878 Jan 14, In Hall v.
Decuir, 95 U.S. 485, the United States Supreme Court ruled that
common carriers (rail, ferry, riverboat, and other modes of
transportation) could not discriminate based on race (13th
Amendment) in interstate travel. US Supreme court ruled that race
separation on trains was unconstitutional. The decision did not,
however, stop railroad companies from discriminating.
(www.historiccambria.com/History/History19th.htm)
1878 Apr 21, Ship Azor left
Charleston with 206 blacks for Liberia.
(MC, 4/21/02)
1879 Feb 28, In the "Exodus of
1879" southern blacks fled political and economic exploitation.
(MC, 2/28/02)
1879 May 24, William Lloyd
Garrison (73), abolitionist (Liberator), died.
(MC, 5/24/02)
1879 Cinque (b.~1813), the
leader of the 1839 Amistad revolt, died in Sierra Leone.
(www.africawithin.com/bios/joseph_cinque.htm)
1880 California politicians
integrated the state’s public schools.
(SSFC, 5/16/04, p.E5)
1880 John Ballard, a blacksmith
and former slave, bought land on a mountain in the Santa Monica
range of southern California. In 2010 the 2,031 peak, previously
known as Negrohead Mountain, was renamed to Ballard Mountain.
(SFC, 2/22/10, p.A6)
1880 Richard Etheridge was
promoted to Keeper of the North Carolina Life-Saving Station #17. He
was the 1st black man to be appointed a Station Keeper in the US
Life-Saving Service.
(ON, 1/02, p.1)
1881 May 17, Frederick Douglass
was appointed recorder of deeds for Washington, D.C.
(HN, 5/17/98)
1881 Jul 4, In Alabama Tuskegee
Institute enrolled 30 students. It was founded by former slave
Booker T. Washington as a "normal" school and industrial institute
where "colored" people with little or no formal schooling could be
trained as teachers and skilled workers.
(NH, 2/97, p.82)(WSJ, 2/24/98, p.A22)(IB,
Internet, 12/7/98)
1882-1968 According to records at Tuskegee Univ.
4,743 people were killed by lynch mobs in the US during this period.
3,446 of these people were black.
(Econ, 6/18/05, p.29)
1883 Nov 3, Race riots took
place in Danville, Virginia, and 4 blacks were killed.
(MC, 11/3/01)
1883 Nov 26, Sojourner Truth,
former slave and abolitionist, died in Battle Creek, Mich.
(AP, 11/26/08)
1883 Dec 22, Arthur Wergs
Mitchell, first African-American to be elected to the U.S. House of
Representatives, was born.
(HN, 12/22/98)
1883 J.A. Rogers, writer, was
born in Jamaica. He later moved to the US and then Europe and
authored the 3-volume work "Sex and Race."
(SSFC, 6/16/02, p.M2)
1884 Nov 16, William Wells
Brown (b~1814), African-American abolitionist lecturer,
novelist, playwright, and historian, died in Massachusetts. His
novel “Clotel” (1853) is considered the first novel written by an
African American. In 2014 Ezra Greenspan authored “William Wells
Brown: An African American Life.”
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Wells_Brown)(SSFC, 12/14/14,
p.Q7)
1885 Brazil passed a law
freeing slaves between the ages of 60 and 65 in exchange for three
final years of service. By the following year slaves began running
away from their masters in large numbers.
(Econ, 12/21/13, p.52)
1886 Mar 17, The Carrollton
Massacre in Mississippi occurred and 20 African Americans were
killed.
(HN, 3/17/98)
1886 Sep 13, Alain Locke,
writer and first African-American Rhodes scholar, was born.
(HN, 9/13/98)
1886 Arthur Wharton
(1865-1930), Accra, Gold Coast (now Ghana)-born athlete, won the
British Amateur Athletics Association 100 yards sprint in a world
record time of exactly 10 seconds. He is believed to have been the
world's first black professional footballer.
(AP,
6/30/11)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Wharton)
1887 Aug 17, Marcus Garvy
(d.1940), Black Nationalist and Jamaican leader who promoted the
departure of African-Americans back Africa, was born. He was active
in the US from 1916-1925 and advocated racial separation and
emigration of American Negroes to Africa. He was deported in 1925.
He was the founder of the Universal Negro Improvement Association.
He also founded the Black Star Line, a steamship company owned and
operated by blacks to link black communities around the world.
(AHD, p.544)(Civilization, July-Aug, 1995, p.
36)(WSJ, 2/7/96, p.A-12)(HN, 8/17/98)
1888 Jan 20, Leadbelly, blues
12 string guitarist (Rock Island Line), was born in Louisiana.
(MC, 1/20/02)
1888 May 13, Slavery was
abolished in Brazil. Some 4 million slaves had been imported, the
most of any nation in the western hemisphere.
(WSJ, 8/6/96, p.A1)(SS, Internet, 5/13/97)(HN,
5/13/98)
1890 The Louisiana state
Legislature passed the Louisiana Separate Car Act, which called for
railroad companies to provide equal but separate accommodations for
white and colored races.
(SFC, 5/12/96, p.A-6)(ON, 11/03, p.5)
1890 William Sheppard (b.1865
in Virginia) left the US for missionary work in Congo. In 2002 Pagan
Kennedy authored "Black Livingstone: A True Tale of African
Adventure."
(SSFC, 2/3/02, p.M1)
1892 Jun 7, Homer Plessy was
arrested in New Orleans for violating the Separate Car Act. His case
went all the way to the US Supreme Court, which upheld the law on
May 18, 1896.
(ON, 11/03, p.5)
1892 Aug 5, Harriet Tubman
received a pension from Congress for her work as a nurse, spy and
scout during the Civil War.
(HN, 8/5/98)
1892 Aug 13, The first issue of
the "Afro American" newspaper was published in Baltimore, Maryland.
(HN, 8/13/98)
1892 William Sheppard, US
missionary in Congo, set out to find the hidden kingdom of Kuba and
eventually made contact with King Kot Amweeky.
(SSFC, 2/3/02, p.M1)
1893 Jan 26, Bessie Coleman,
first black airplane pilot, was born.
(HN, 1/26/99)
1893 Jul 7, In Bardwell, Ky.,
C.J. Miller, a black man accused of murdering two white girls, was
mutilated, torched and left hanging from a telegraph pole. Ida Wells
(1862-1931) was commissioned to investigate the story by the Chicago
Inter-Ocean newspaper and published her findings under the title
“History Is a Weapon.”
(www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/wellslynchlaw.html)(WSJ, 3/8/08,
p.W8)
1893 In San Francisco a 2-story
wooden building was built about this time at 1690 Post St. It was
owned by black businessman Charles Sullivan, who later rented the
downstairs storefront to James “Jimbo” Edwards, who then
started selling chicken and waffles. From 1950 to 1965 it became
Jimbo’s Bop City, a late-night hangout for jazz musicians. In 1980
the building was moved to 1712-1716 Filmore St. and became home to
Marcus Books. In 2014 Jimbo’s Bop City and Marcus Books were named
SF historic landmarks.
(SFC, 1/30/14, p.D3)
1894 Feb 8, The US Enforcement
Act was repealed making it easier to disenfranchise blacks.
(MC, 2/8/02)
1894 Feb 14, Mary Lucinda
Cardwell Dawson, was born. She founded the National Negro Opera
Company (NNOC) and was appointed to President John F. Kennedy's
National Committee on Music.
(HN, 2/14/99)
1894 Jul 16, Many negro miners
in Alabama were killed by striking white miners.
(MC, 7/16/02)
1894 Louisiana extended the
Separate Car Act to include train station waiting rooms. The
Legislature in this year also passed a law prohibiting interracial
marriage.
(ON, 11/03, p.5)
1894 Wheeling Gaunt, a former
slave, bequeathed 9 acres of land to the village of Yellow springs,
Ohio, with the stipulation that the "poor worthy widows" of the town
receive 25 lbs. of flour every Christmas.
(WSJ, 12/4/96, p.B1)
1895 Feb 20, Frederick Douglass
(77), Abolitionist and escaped slave, died in Washington, D.C. In
1881 Douglass authored "The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass."
(AP, 2/19/98)(MC, 2/20/02)(ON, 7/02, p.8)
1895 Feb 21, The NC Legislature
adjourned for the day to mark the death of Frederick Douglass.
(MC, 2/21/02)
1895 Mar 18, Some 200 blacks
left Savannah, Ga., for Liberia.
(MC, 3/18/02)
1895 May 11, William Grant
Still was born. He is considered the Dean of black African
composers.
(HN, 5/11/99)
1895 Jun 10, Hattie McDaniel
was born in Wichita, Kansas. She was the first African-American
actress to win an Oscar which she won for her role as a maid in Gone
With the Wind.
(www.imdb.com/name/nm0567408/)
1896 May 18, The US Supreme
Court upheld the State of Louisiana Separate Car Act in Plessy vs.
Ferguson. The Plessy v. Ferguson decision allowed that as long as
accommodation existed, segregation did not constitute
discrimination, establishing the doctrine of "separate but equal."
The decision gave legitimacy to the segregationist policies known as
Jim Crow laws. The ruling that was overturned in the 1954 Brown
case, which involved elementary education. The Court ruled
unanimously that segregation in public education was a denial of the
equal protection of the laws.
(www.ferris.edu/jimcrow/links/misclink/plessy/)(SFC, 5/12/96,
p.A-6)(Econ, 4/2/11, p.24)(AP, 5/18/03)
1896 Jul 21, Mary Church
Terrell founded the National Association of Colored Women in
Washington, D.C.
(HN, 7/21/98)
1897 Feb 27, Miriam Anderson,
was born. She became a world renown opera singer and civil rights
pioneer, and is best remembered for singing "My Country Tis of Thee"
in front of the Lincoln Memorial.
(HN, 2/27/02)
1897 Dec 12, Lillian Smith,
Southern writer and civil rights activist, was born.
(HN, 12/12/00)
1898 Feb 22, A black postmaster
was lynched and his wife and 3 daughters were shot in Lake City, SC.
(MC, 2/22/02)
1898 Apr 9, Paul Robeson
(d.1976), black athlete, actor and singer, was born. He is best
remembered for his role in Othello. Lloyd L. Brown later wrote the
biography "The Young Paul Robeson: On My Journey Now."
(SFC, 3/26/98, p.A26)(HN, 4/9/99)
1898 May 12, Louisiana adopted
a new constitution with a "grandfather clause" designed to eliminate
black voters.
(SC, Internet, 5/12/97)
1898 Nov 9, Some white people
in Wilmington, NC, issued a White Declaration of Independence,
proclaiming "that we will no longer be ruled ... by men of African
origin.
(AP, 11/28/09)
1898
Nov 10, A race riot in Wilmington, NC, left many blacks killed. A
vigilante group of armed supremacists forcibly removed the
Republican city leaders (both black and white) from office, and took
control, burning buildings and shooting blacks. Reports vary from a
coroner’s total of 14 to unconfirmed eyewitness reports claiming
scores of deaths.
(http://statelibrary.dcr.state.nc.us/nc/bio/afro/riot.htm)(WSJ,
1/22/02, p.A11)(AP, 11/28/09)
1899 Apr 23, In Georgia some
2000 people gathered to watch the lynching Sam Hose, a black man
questionably accused of murdering a white planter and raping his
wife. His ears, fingers, and genitals were cut off and his face was
skinned before he was burned in kerosene soaked wood. His and other
stories were later told in the 1998 book: "Trouble in Mind: Black
Southerners in the Age of Jim Crow" by Leon F. Litwack.
(SFEC, 4/19/98, BR p.4)
1899 Jun 2, Black Americans
observed a day of fasting to protest lynchings.
(SC, 6/2/02)
1899 Charles Chesnutt (b.1858),
African-American writer, authored 2 collections of short stories and
a biography of Frederick Douglass.
(WSJ, 1/22/02, p.A11)
1899 Frederick Bruce Thomas
(1872-1928), an American-born black businessman, moved to Moscow and
renamed himself Fyodor Fyodorovich Tomas. He became one of the
city’s richest owners of variety theaters and restaurants. The
Bolshevik Revolution ruined him. He escaped with his family to
Constantinople in 1919. In 2012 Vladimir Alexandrov authored “The
Black Russian,” a biography of Thomas.
(SSFC, 2/10/13, p.F2)
1900 Jan 30, John P. Parker
(b.1827), Ohio-based inventor and conductor on the Underground
Railway, died. His autobiography “His Promised Land: The
Autobiography of John P. Parker, Former Slave and Conductor on the
Underground Railway” was recounted in a series of interviews and
later edited by Stuart Seely Sprague and published in 1996.
(ON, 12/11,
p.5)(www.ohiohistorycentral.org/entry.php?rec=2466&nm=John-P-Parker)
1900 May 23, Civil War hero
Sgt. William H. Carney became the first African American to receive
the Medal of Honor, thirty-seven years after the Battle of Fort
Wagner.
(HN, 5/23/99)
1900 Aug 23, Booker T.
Washington formed the National Negro Business League in Boston,
Massachusetts.
(HN, 8/23/98)
1900 Charles Chesnutt (b.1858),
African-American writer, authored his novel "The House Behind the
Cedars."
(WSJ, 1/22/02, p.A11)
1901 Mar 7, Blacks were found
to be still enslaved in certain parts of South Carolina.
(HN, 3/7/98)
1901 Dec 24, Clarence King
(b.1842), explorer and geologist, died in Arizona. He lived a double
life as James Todd, the husband of a black woman named Ada (d.1964
at 103). In 2009 Roger K. Miller authored “Passing Strange: A Gilded
Age Tale of Love and Deception Across the Color Line.”
(http://encyclopedia.jrank.org/KHA_KRI/KING_CLARENCE_18421901_.html)(SFC,
2/24/09, p.E3)
1901 Charles Chesnutt (b.1858),
African-American writer, authored his novel "The Marrow of
Tradition."
(WSJ, 1/22/02, p.A11)
1901 The Alabama state
constitution was enacted to reverse gains made by blacks after the
Civil War. It included a prohibition on marriages between blacks and
whites. In 1999 steps were taken to repeal the ban.
(SFC, 11/7/98, p.A11)(SFC, 4/17/99, p.A4)(WSJ,
4/3/02, p.A1)
1902 Feb 1, Langston Hughes
(d.1967), African-American poet. was born. (author: Way Down South)
(440 Int'l, 2/1/1999)(HN, 2/1/99)
1903 Zora Neale Hurston
(d.1960), black author, was born.
(SFC, 4/5/96, p.D-1)(SFC, 12/13/96, p.C8)
1903 W.E.B. Du Bois published
"The Souls of Black Folk."
(Wired, 10/96, p.134)(WSJ, 4/29/03, A16)
1904 Aug 7, Ralph Bunche, U.S.
diplomat and the first African-American Nobel Prize winner (1950),
was born.
(HN, 8/7/98)(MC, 8/7/02)
1904 Dec 24, German SW Africa
abolished the slavery of young children.
(MC, 12/24/01)
1904 Mary Ellen Pleasant,
abolitionist and SF businesswoman, died and was buried in Napa, Ca.
Her monument reads “Mother of Civil Rights in California.”
(SFC, 6/10/04, p.B4)
1906 Feb 9, Poet Paul Laurence
Dunbar (33), son of former slaves, died of TB in his hometown of
Dayton, Ohio.
(AH, 2/06, p.15)
1906 Aug 13, At Fort Brown,
Texas, some 10-20 armed men engaged an all-Black Army unit in a
shooting rampage that left one townsperson dead and a police officer
wounded. A 1910 inquiry placed guilt on the soldiers and Pres.
Roosevelt ordered all 167 discharged without honor. In 1970 John
Weaver (d.2002) authored "The Brownsville Raid," an account of the
incident that led the Army to exonerate all 167 men.
(SFC, 12/7/02, p.A25)
1906 Sep 3, Joe Gans
(1874-1910), born as Joseph Gant, defended his lightweight boxing
title against Battling Nelson in Goldfield, Nevada. He was the first
African-American World Boxing Champion, reigning continuously as
World Lightweight Champion from 1902 to 1908. In 2012 William Gildea
authored “The Longest Fight: In the Ring with Joe Gans, Boxing’s
First African-American Champion.”
(Econ, 7/14/12,
p.75)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Gans)
1906 Sep 22, Race riots in
Atlanta, Georgia, killed 21 people. In 2001 Mark Bauerlein authored
“Negrophobia,” an account of the riots.
(HN, 9/22/98)(WSJ, 6/12/01, p.A20)
1906 In SF Purcell’s
Negro dance hall opened at 550 Pacific St. and Sid LeProtti began
playing there. It w3as one of the first buildings erected following
the earthquake and fire.
(SFEC, 4/12/98, p.D7)(SFC, 2/16/09, p.B2)
1906 Gov. James Kimble of
Mississippi denounced black men as fiends and argued that lynching
was the only way to control a barbarous race.
(WSJ, 1/14/02, p.A16)
1907 Dec 29, Robert C. Weaver
(d.1997), the first African American to serve on a president’s
cabinet, was born. He advised Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt on
Housing, Education and Employment. [see Jan 13,18, 1966]
(HN, 12/29/00)
1907 The 1st Black American was
elected a Rhodes scholar.
(WSJ, 7/11/03, p.A1)
1908 Jun 13, Thomas Greene
Wiggins (b.1849), a blind African-American piano player born into
slavery, died in New Jersey. “Blind Tom” had become well known for
his piano virtuosity. In 2014 Jeffery Renard Allen authored “Song of
the Shank: A Novel,” based on the life of Wiggins.
(SSFC, 7/13/14, p.N1)(http://tinyurl.com/qhhzca6)
1908 Jul 2, Thurgood Marshall
(d.1993), first African-American US Supreme Court Justice, was born
in Baltimore. He served on the US Supreme Court from 1967-1991. As a
civil rights lawyer in the 1950s he maintained a confidential
relationship with the FBI.
(SFC, 12/3/96, p.A3)(HN, 7/2/98)(AP, 7/2/08)
1908 Aug 3, Col. Allan
Allensworth (1842-1914) filed the site plan for the first
African-American town, Allensworth, California. Allensworth had
purchased 800 acres in Tulare County along the Sante Fe rail line
and planned a settlement to be governed, financed and operated by
black people. The town flourished for a decade and then began to
crumble. In 1976 it was transformed into a 240-acre state park.
(HN, 8/3/98)(SFC, 1/8/07, p.A1)
1908 Aug 14, A race war broke
out in Springfield, Illinois. Angry over reports that a black man
had sexually assaulted a white woman, a white mob wanted to take a
recently arrested suspect from the city jail and kill him. Most
blacks had fled the city, but as the mob swept through the area,
they captured and lynched a black barber, Scott Burton, who had
stayed behind to protect his home. Rioting continued the next day
leaving a total of two blacks and 5 whites dead and hundreds of
thousands of dollars worth of property destroyed. Some 4,000 state
militiamen were required to quell the riot, which helped inspire the
creation of the NAACP the following year.
(www.lib.niu.edu/1996/iht329622.html)(AP,
8/14/08)(WSJ, 1/20/08, p.A12)
1908 Aug 25, The National
Association of Colored Nurses was formed.
(chblue.com, 8/25/01)
1908 Oct, Georgia’s nearly
all-white electorate voted by a 2 to 1 margin to abolish its system
of peonage as of March 1909.
(WSJ, 3/29/08, p.W8)
1908 Dec 26, Jack Johnson
(1878-1946) of Texas knocked out Tommy Burns in Australia to become
the 1st black world heavyweight boxing champion. He was not
officially given the title until 1910 when he beat Jim Jeffries in
Las Vegas. In 1913 Johnson fled the US because of trumped up charges
of violating the Mann Act's stipulations against transporting white
women across state lines for prostitution. Johnson held the title
until 1915. In 1920 he returned to the US, was arrested and served a
one year sentence in Leavenworth in Kansas, where he was appointed
athletic director of the prison.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Johnson_(boxer))(ON, 4/09, p.7)
1909 Feb 12, The National
Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) was
founded by 60 people gathered in NYC to discuss recent race riots
and how to fight discrimination. They were initially known as the
National Negro committee and signed a proclamation known as “The
Call.” It was based on the Niagara movement of 1905. Mary White
Ovington (1865-1951) was one of the founders.
(SFC, 5/12/96, p.A-6)(SFEC,12/797, BR p.6)(AP,
2/12/98)(SFC, 2/12/09, p.A1)
1909 Feb 23, Shrove Tuesday.
The Zulu Social Aid and Pleasure Society, the 1st African-American
Mardi Gras organization, first marched in the New Orleans Mardi Gras
parade. Members had marched in the Mardi Gras as early as 1901, but
their first appearance as Zulus came in 1909, with William Story as
King.
(www.mardigras.org/Calc.html)(http://tinyurl.com/ylqbwbj)
1909 May 17, White firemen on
Georgia RR struck to protest the hiring of blacks.
(MC, 5/17/02)
1909 May 31, The National
Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) held its
first conference at the United Charities Building in NYC.
(HN, 5/31/98)(MC, 5/31/02)
1909 Aug 10, George W.
Crockett, first African-American lawyer with the U.S. Department of
Labor, was born.
(HN, 8/10/98)
1910 Jul 4, African-American
Jack Johnson knocked out Jim Jeffries in the 15th round of a
heavyweight boxing match in Reno, Nevada. As Johnson entered the
ring a band played “All Coons Look Alike to Me.” Johnson’s victory
prompted race riots in major cities across the United States leaving
as many as 26 people dead. Jack London covered the match and coined
the phrase "The great white hope" in his story.
(SFEC, 10/3/99, p.B10)(Econ, 6/21/08, p.104)(ON,
4/09, p.7)
1911 Jan 3, Joseph Rauh
civil rights activist: cofounded Americans for Democratic Action;
member: executive board of NAACP; general counsel: Leadership
Conference on Civil Rights, was born.
(440 Int'l. 1/3/99)
1911 Scott Joplin (1868-1917)
wrote his opera "Treemonisha." The 1st full professional staging was
done in 1975 by the Houston Grand Opera.
(WSJ, 7/5/00, p.A20)(SFC, 6/21/03, p.D1)
1913 Feb 4, Rosa Lee Parks,
civil rights activist, was born. Her refusal to give up her seat on
a segregated bus in Alabama started the Civil Rights Movement.
(HN, 2/4/99)
1913 Mar 10, Harriet Tubman,
abolitionist, conductor on Underground RR, died in NY. In 2004
Catherine Clinton authored "Harriet Tubman: The Road to Freedom."
(MC, 3/10/02)(SSFC, 2/1/04, p.M1)
1914 May 13, Joe Louis, world
heavyweight boxing champion from 1937 to 1949, was born in
Lafayette, Ala. His boxing record was 63-3 with 49 knock-outs.
(AP, 5/13/97)(HN, 5/13/99)
1915 Apr 5, Jack Johnson
(1878-1946), African-American heavyweight champion boxer since 1908,
lost the heavyweight championship in Cuba to Jess Willard in the
26th round.
(SFC, 1/17/05,
p.D6)(www.hickoksports.com/biograph/johnsonjack.shtml)
1915 Jul 28, 10,000 blacks
marched on 5th Ave in NYC to protest lynchings.
(SC, 7/28/02)
1915 Nov 14, Booker T.
Washington (b.1856), Black American educator, died in Tuskegee,
Alabama. The former slave later founded the Tuskegee Institute
(1881). Booker Taliaferro Washington later became the 1st black on a
US postage stamp. His autobiography "Up From Slavery" was listed in
1999 as the 3rd best work of non-fiction in the English language in
the 20th century by the Modern Library. In 2009 Robert J. Norrell
authored “Up From History: The Life of Booker T. Washington.”
(AP, 5/5/97)(HN, 4/5/99)(SFC, 4/29/99, p.C5)(WSJ,
1/23/09, p.W10)
1915 Dec 4, Ku Klux Klan
received a charter from Fulton County, Ga.
(MC, 12/4/01)
1916 Jul 25, An explosion at
the Cleveland Waterworks tunnel project trapped 12 men and 18
would-be rescuers. 8 men were saved and 10 bodies were recovered by
a team led by black inventor Garrett A. Morgan (d.1963) dressed in
his new Safety Hood.
(ON, 3/02, p.12)
1916 Anthony Crawford, black
farmer and father of 13 children, was beaten and lynched In
Abbeyville, South Carolina, following an argument with a white
storekeeper.
(Econ, 6/18/05, p.29)
1917 Apr 1, Scott Joplin
(b.1868), ragtime composer (Sting), died of syphilis in a NY mental
hospital. His work included the opera "Treemonisha."
(MC, 4/1/02)(SFC, 6/21/03, p.D3)
1917 May 5, Eugene Jacques
Bullard became the first African-American aviator when he earned a
flying certificate with the French Air Service.
(HN, 5/5/99)
1917 Jul 2, Race riots erupted
in East St. Louis, Illinois. The official death toll was put at 48,
but as many as 200 were believed killed. In 1964 Elliott M. Rudwick
authored Race Riot at East St. Louis, July 2, 1917.” In 2008 Harper
Barnes authored “Never Been a Time: The 1917 Race Riot That Sparked
the Civil Rights Movement.”
(SFC, 7/18/08,
p.E3)(www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=54020510)
1917 Sep 8, Eugene Bullard,
aviator, was born in Columbus, Georgia. He emigrated to France and
became the first African-American combat aviator when he flew a
reconnaissance mission over the city of Metz, France. He was
credited with one confirmed "kill," a German Pfalz he shot down over
Verdun.
(MC, 9/8/01)
1917 Nov 5, The US Supreme
Court decision (Buchanan vs. Warley) struck down a Louisville, Ky.,
ordnance requiring blacks and whites to live in separate areas
(race-based zoning).
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buchanan_v._Warley)(Econ, 2/11/12,
p.34)
1918 Jul 25, A race riot in
Chester, Pennsylvania, left 3 blacks and 2 whites dead.
(SC, 7/25/02)
1919 Jan 19, John H. Johnson
(d.2005), editor and publisher of Ebony and Jet magazines, was born
Arkansas.
(HN, 1/19/99)(SFC, 8/8/05, p.B4)
1919 Jan 31, Jackie
Robinson, first black major league baseball player, was born.
(HN, 1/31/99)
1919 May 25, Madame C.J. Walker
(b.1867 as Sarah Breedlove), black, wealthy cosmetics manufacturer,
died at age 51. In 2003 Beverly Lowry authored "Her Dream of Dreams:
The Rise and Triumph of Madame C.J. Walker."
(WSJ, 4/22/03, D7)(SSFC, 10/24/04, Par p.4)
1919 Jul 24, A race riot in
Washington, DC, left 6 killed and 100 wounded.
(MC, 7/24/02)
1919 Jul 27, In a Chicago race
riot 15 whites and 23 blacks were killed with 500 injured.
(MC, 7/27/02)
1919 Oct 1, Black sharecroppers
gathered at Elaine, Arkansas, to secure a more equitable price for
their products. When a white deputy sheriff and a railroad
detective, arrived at the church, a fight broke out between them and
the guards in which the railroad detective was killed and the deputy
sheriff was wounded. This led to 3 days of fighting and the killing
of 5 white men and close to 200 black men, women and children. The
Arkansas state court later sentenced 12 sharecroppers to death and a
5-year legal battle ensued. In 2008 Robert Whitaker authored “”On
the Laps of Gods: The Red Summer of 1919 and the Struggle for
Justice That Remade a Nation.”
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elaine_Race_Riot)(SSFC, 7/27/08, Books
p.1)
1920 Feb 13-1920 Feb 14, Andrew
“Rube” Foster (1879-1930) formed the 1st black baseball league, the
Negro National League, at a meeting at the Colored YMCA, Kansas
City, Mo.
(AH, 2/05,
p.17)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rube_Foster)
1920 Aug 2, Marcus Garvey
presented his "Back To Africa" program in NYC.
(MC, 8/2/02)
1921 May 31, A major race riot
broke out in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Greenwood, the black section of town,
was burned. In 1997 Jewell Parker Rhodes wrote the novel "Magic
City" based on this event. As many as 10,000 white men and boys
attacked the black community and 35 blocks of the black business
district were burned with participation by police officers and a
local unit of the National Guard. Some 200-300 people were believed
to have been killed. In 2000 the Tulsa Race Riot Commission
recommended that reparations be paid to survivors of the riots. In
2001 a final state commission recommended that reparations be paid
to survivors and their descendants.
(NPR, 5/31/96)(SFEC, 6/29/97, BR p.3)(SFC,
8/10/99, p.A2)(SFC, 2/5/00, p.A3)(SFC, 3/1/01, p.A4)
1921 The film “Sport of the
Gods” featured an all-star cast of colored artists. It was based on
a book by Paul Laurence Dunbar.
(SFC, 7/16/08, p.E3)
1922 Mar 4, Bert Williams
(b.1874), Antigua-born black actor, mime and singer, died after
collapsing onstage in Detroit. In 2005 Caryl Phillips authored
“Dancing in the Dark,” a novel based on Bert Williams. His
recordings included “Nobody.”
(www.duboislc.org/ShadesOfBlack/BertWms.html)(SFC, 2/11/08, p.E1)
1922 Nov 13, Black Renaissance
began in Harlem, NY.
(MC, 11/13/01)
1922 Carter G. Woodson
(1875-1950), black historian, authored “The Negro in Our History.”
(WSJ, 5/19/05, p.D8)
1923 Feb 16, Betsy Smith makes
her first recording "Down Hearted Blues," her music reflected the
Depression era.
(HN, 2/16/99)
1923 Jun 21, Marcus Garvey was
sentenced to 5 years for using mail to defraud.
(MC, 6/21/02)
1924 Mar 20, The Virginia
Legislature passed two closely related eugenics laws: SB 219,
entitled "The Racial Integrity Act" and SB 281, "An ACT to provide
for the sexual sterilization of inmates of State institutions in
certain cases", henceforth referred to as "The Sterilization Act".
The Racial Integrity Act required that a racial description of every
person be recorded at birth, and felonized marriage between "white
persons" and non-white persons. The law was the most famous ban on
miscegenation in the US, and was overturned by the US Supreme Court
in 1967, in Loving v. Virginia. Virginia repealed the sterilization
in 1979. In 2001 the House of Delegates voted to express regret for
the state’s selecting breeding policies that had forced
sterilizations on some 8,000 people. The Senate soon followed suit.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racial_Integrity_Act_of_1924)(SSFC,
2/4/01, p.A3)(SFC, 2/15/01, p.C16)
1924 Nov 30, Shirley Chisholm
(d.2004), first African-American congresswoman (1968), was born as
Shirley St. Hill in NYC.
(SFC, 1/3/05, p.A3)
1925 Jan 31, Benjamin
Hooks, civil rights leader, was born.
(HN, 1/31/99)
1925 Feb 8, Marcus Garvey
entered federal prison in Atlanta.
(MC, 2/8/02)
1925 May 19, Malcolm X,
(Malcolm Little) militant black Muslim leader, was born in Omaha,
Neb. He spoke of racial pride and black nationalism and was
assassinated in 1965. "You can't separate peace from freedom because
no one can be at peace unless he has his freedom."
(AP, 2/21/99)(HN, 5/19/99)(SFC, 9/8/99, p.A7)
1925 Aug 8, The first national
congress of the Ku Klux Klan opened. 200,000 members marched in
Washington, DC.
(HN, 8/8/98)(MC, 8/8/02)
1925 Ossian Sweet, a black
doctor who had moved into a white neighborhood of Detroit, was
indicted on murder charges after defending his property and life
against a mob attack. In 2004 Phyllis Vine authored "One Man's
Castle: Clarence Darrow in Defense of the American Dream."
(SSFC, 4/18/04, p.M4)
1925 Golden State Mutual Life
Insurance Co. was founded to give blacks access to life insurance.
In the 1940s architect Paul R. Williams was hired to design its
headquarters in LA.
(WSJ, 5/12/04, p.B10)
1925-1926 Edward Christopher Williams (1871-1929),
black playwright, teacher and librarian, published "When Washington
Was in Vogue," a serialized novel in The Messenger, a socialist
magazine.
(WSJ, 1/23/04, p.W5)
1926 Jan 29, Violette Neatley
Anderson became the first African-American woman admitted to
practice before the U.S. Supreme Court.
(HN, 1/29/99)
1926 Feb 7, Negro History Week,
originated by Carter G. Woodson, was observed for the first time.
The 2nd week in February was declared Negro History Week.
(USAT, 2/14/97, p.15A)(HN, 2/7/99)
1926 Mar 11, Ralph David
Abernathy, civil rights leader, was born.
(HN, 3/11/98)
1926 Jul 2, Medgar Evers,
American civil rights leader in Mississippi, was born. He was
murdered in front of his house by Byron DeLa Beckwith.
(HN, 7/2/99)
1926 Sep 25, The Convention to
Suppress the Slave Trade and Slavery, an international treaty
created under the auspices of the League of Nations, was first
signed in Geneva to be effective March 9, 1927.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1926_Slavery_Convention)
1927 Mar 1, Harry Belafonte,
calypso singer (Buck and the Preacher), was born in Harlem, NYC.
(SC, 3/1/02)
1927 Mar 7, A Texas law that
banned Negroes from voting was ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme
Court.
(HN, 3/7/98)
1927 Jul 10, David Dinkins,
first African-American mayor of New York City, was born.
(HN, 7/10/98)
1927 Aug 21, The 4th
Pan-African Congress met in NYC.
(SC, 8/21/02)
1927 Aug 25, Althea Gibson
(d.2003), Wimbledon's 1st black tennis champion (1957), was born in
Silver, SC.
(HN, 8/25/98)(WSJ, 9/29/03, p.A1)
1927 Dec, In Nashville, Ten.,
after harmonica wizard DeFord Bailey played his "Pan American
Blues," WSM Announcer Judge Hay got the idea to change the name of
the show from the "Barn Dance" to the "Grand Ole Opry."
(www.pbs.org/deford/timeline/index.html)
1927 Alonzo Herndon, black
Atlanta businessman, died. In 2002 Carole Merritt authored "The
Herndons: An Atlanta Family."
(WSJ, 8/28/02, p.D8)
1928 Feb 24, In its first show
to feature a Black artist, the New Gallery of New York exhibited
works of Archibald Motley.
(HN, 2/24/98)
1928 Mar 10, James Earl Ray,
alleged assassin of Martin Luther King Jr, was born.
(MC, 3/10/02)
1928 Apr 4, Maya Angelou
(d.2014), American poet and writer, was born.
(HN, 4/4/98)(Econ, 6/7/14, p.98)
1928 Frederick Bruce Thomas
(b.1872), an American-born black businessman, died in
Constantinople. Thomas had made Moscow his home in 1899 where he
renamed himself Fyodor Fyodorovich Tomas and became one of the
city’s richest owners of variety theaters and restaurants. The
Bolshevik Revolution ruined him. He escaped with his family to
Constantinople in 1919. He made a second fortune by opening
nightclubs that introduced jazz to Turkey. The long arm of American
racism, the xenophobia of the new Turkish Republic, and Frederick’s
own extravagance landed him in debtor’s prison. In 2012 Vladimir
Alexandrov authored “The Black Russian,” a biography of Thomas.
(SSFC, 2/10/13, p.F2)
1929 Feb 23, Elston Howard,
Yankee catcher (1st black NY Yankee/1963 AL MVP), was born.
(MC, 2/23/02)
1929 The film “Hallelujah,”
released by MGM, featured an all black cast. It was produced and
directed by King Vidor.
(SFC, 7/16/08, p.E3)
1930 Jun 7, NY Times agrees to
capitalize the n in "Negro."
(SC, 6/7/02)
1930 Aug 7, In Marion, Indiana,
a mob broke into a jail and beat to death 2 young black men and hung
them from a tree in the courthouse square. Tommy Shipp and Abe Smith
and a 3rd teenager had just been arrested for a botched robbery that
left Claude Deeter, a white man. dead. James Cameron (16) was saved
from hanging, even as a noose was on his neck. In 2006 Cynthia Carr
authored “Our Town: A Heartland Lynching, a Haunted Town and the
Hidden History of White America.”
(SSFC, 3/26/06, p.M3)
1931 Mar 25, In Alabama 9 young
black men, arrested at Paint Rock after riding a freight train, were
taken to Scottsboro. Victoria Price (21) and Ruby Bates (17), who
had worked as prostitutes in Huntsville, were also found on the
train dressed as boys. The 9 men were soon charged with raping the 2
white woman, while riding on the freight train.
(WSJ, 6/20/07,
p.A17)(www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/FTrials/scottsboro/SB_chron.html)
1931 Mar 25, Ida Wells-Barnett
(b.1862), black journalist, died. In 1893 she investigated the
Kentucky lynching of a black man accused of murdering 2 white girls.
In 2008 Paula J. Giddings authored “Ida: A Sword among Lions.”
(WSJ, 3/8/08,
p.W8)(www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/FWWwells.htm)
1931 Mar 30, In Scottsboro,
Ala., 9 young black men were indicted for rape. By the end of April
all were tried, convicted and sentenced to death, except for one age
13, who was sentenced to life in prison. The US Supreme Court later
overturned the convictions, but they were convicted at a 2nd trial,
even though one of the accused said no rape had occurred. Five
convictions were overturned in 1937 after one alleged victim
recanted her story. Clarence Norris received a pardon before his
death in 1976. In 2013 Alabama’s parole board approved posthumous
pardons for the “Scottsboro Boys” during a hearing for three black
men whose convictions were never overturned.
(WSJ, 6/20/07, p.A17)(SFC, 11/22/13, p.A15)
1931 Apr 6, The 1st Scottsboro
(Ala) trial began for 9 blacks accused of rape.
(www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/FTrials/scottsboro/SB_chron.html)
1931 Aug 15, Roy Wilkins joined
NAACP as asst. secretary.
(MC, 8/15/02)
1931 Aug 20, Donald King,
American promoter of boxing, was born.
(MC, 8/20/02)
1931 In Detroit, Mich., Wallace
D. Fard started a movement that later became the Nation of Islam. He
was succeeded by Elijah Muhammad, who stressed the evil of white
people and the need for black self-sufficiency.
(WSJ, 10/24/03, p.A8)
1931 Slavery was officially
abolished in Ethiopia (1930 by the Ethiopian calendar).
(www.law.emory.edu/WAL/Advocacy/day1.htm)
1932 The US government began
its 40-year Tuskegee Syphilis Study on 623 black men in rural Macon
County, Ala. It ended in 1972 after Health Service investigator
Peter Buxton exposed the study's unethical procedures.
(SSFC, 1/25/04, p.A27)
1933 Mar 15, The NAACP began a
coordinated attack on segregation and discrimination.
(MC, 3/15/02)
1933 Mar 18, Unita Blackwell,
1st black mayor in Mississippi, was born.
(MC, 3/18/02)
1933 May 11, Louis Farrakhan,
leader of the black Nation of Islam, was born.
(HN, 5/11/98)
1933 Dec 8, Flip Wilson
(d.1998), the fist successful black host of a TV variety show, was
born in Jersey City. He hosted the Flip Wilson Show from 1970-1974.
(SFC, 11/26/98, p.B9)
1933 Dec 19, Cicely Tyson,
actress, best remembered for her role in The Autobiography of Ms.
Jane Pittman, was born.
(HN, 12/19/98)
1933 Arthur Raper (1899-1979),
sociologist, authored “The Tragedy of Lynching.” He was at this time
working for the US federal agency: Commission on Interracial
Cooperation, which had been created after WW I to help black
veterans in the segregated South.
(WSJ, 2/17/07, p.P13)
1934 Feb 2, The SF Police
Commission promulgated a set of regulations regarding dance permits
to Barbary Coast nightclubs. These included a prohibition against
colored and white people dancing together.
(SSFC, 2/1/09, DB p.50)
1934 Mar 17, Thousands of
blacks battled the police in New York in protest of the Scottsboro
trial.
(HN, 3/17/98)
1935 May 5, American Jesse
Owens set the long jump record at 26 ft. 8 inch.
(HN, 5/5/98)(MC, 5/5/02)
1935 Aug 31, Eldridge Cleaver,
political activist and author of "Soul on Fire," was born.
(HN, 8/31/98)
1935 Nov 5, Maryland Court of
Appeals ordered the Univ. of Maryland to admit (black) Donald
Murray.
(MC, 11/5/01)
1935 Zora Neale Hurston
published her folk tale collection: "Mules and Men." In 2001 the
collection was reprinted as "Every Tongue Got to Confess: negro Folk
Tales From the Gulf States."
(SSFC, 12/23/01, p.M1)
1935 The film “Princess Tam
Tam” starred Josephine Baker.
(SFC, 7/16/08, p.E3)
1936 Mar 6, Marion S. Barry,
(Mayor-D-Wash DC), was born.
(MC, 3/6/02)
1936 Jun 20, Jesse Owens of US
set a 100 meter record at 10.2 sec.
(MC, 6/20/02)
1936 Dec 8, NAACP filed suit to
equalize the salaries of black and white teachers.
(MC, 12/8/01)
1937 Apr 5, Colin Powell, U.S.
Army general, was born in Bronx, New York. He later became the
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the Persian Gulf War
and first African American to serve in the position. In 2000
Pres.-elect Bush appointed him to be Sec. of State.
(HFA, '96, p.28)(HN, 4/5/99)(SSFC, 12/17/00,
p.A14)
1937 Jul 24, The state of
Alabama dropped charges against 4 black men accused of raping two
white women in the so-called Scottsboro case.
(AP,
7/24/97)(www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/FTrials/scottsboro/SB_chron.html)
1937 Aug 25, Pullman signed a
contract with the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, one of the
first substantive victories for black workers. [see Oct 10]
(SFC, 12/3/98, p.A3)
1937 Zora Neale Hurston
(1903-1960) wrote her novel: "Their Eyes were Watching God." It is
about a young black woman from Florida who survives a bad marriage
and finds true love with a younger man named Tea Cake. Cassette
recordings were made in 1991. She made some films during research
trips on life in the South in 1928 and 1929.
(SFC, 4/5/96, p.D-1)(SFC, 12/13/96, p.C8)
1937 Able Meeropol authored the
poem "Bitter Fruit," an anti-lynching anthem, under the pen name
Lewis Allan. He later added music. Billie Holiday 1st sang it as
"Strange Fruit" at the Café society nightclub in Greenwich Village.
(SFC, 1/8/03, p.D1)
1938 Nov 8, Crystal Bird Fauset
of Pa., became the first African American woman to be elected to a
state legislature.
(HN, 11/6/98)
1939 Apr 9, On Easter Sunday
Marion Anderson, at the invitation of Secretary of the Interior
Harold L. Ickes, sang a triumphant outdoor concert at the Lincoln
Memorial before a crowd of 75,000 and a radio audience of millions.
In early 1939, the Daughters of the American Revolution denied the
internationally famed contralto the opportunity to sing at
Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C., because of her race. First
Lady Eleanor Roosevelt was so dismayed by the injustice that she
resigned her own D.A.R. membership in protest.
(AP, 4/9/97)(WSJ, 7/24/98, p.W11)(HNPD, 4/9/99)
1940 Jun 10, Marcus Garvey
(b.1887), US black leader (Back to Africa Movement), died. In 2008
Colin Grant authored “Negro With a Hat: The Rise and Fall of Marcus
Garvey.”
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcus_Garvey)(SSFC, 5/11/08, Books
p.5)
1940 Oct 25, Col. Benjamin O.
Davis Sr. (1877-1970), commander of the 369th Infantry of New York,
was promoted to brigadier general. In 1955 his son became the first
black brigadier general in the Air Force. In 1989 Biographer Marvin
Fletcher authored “America's First Black General, Benjamin O. Davis,
Sr., 1880-1970.” Fletcher presented evidence of Davis’ birth records
indicating that he was born in May 1880 and later lied about his age
so that he could enlist in the Army without the permission of his
parents.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_O._Davis,_Sr.)(www.kansaspress.ku.edu/fleame.html)
1940 Nov 13, U.S. Supreme Court
ruled in Hansberry v. Lee that African Americans cannot be barred
from white neighborhoods.
(HN, 11/13/98)
1941 Jan 16, The US War Dept
formed the 1st Army Air Corps squadron for black cadets.
(MC, 1/16/02)
1941 Dec 19, US Attorney
General Francis Biddle issued Circular No. 3591 to all federal
prosecutors to drop references to peonage and label such files as
“Involuntary Servitude and Slavery.” This was in response to Pres.
Roosevelt’s fear that mistreatment of blacks would be used in
propaganda by Japan and Germany.
(WSJ, 3/29/08, p.W8)
1942 Feb 28, There was a race
riot at the Sojourner Truth Homes in Detroit.
(MC, 2/28/02)
1942 May 20, US Navy 1st
permitted black recruits to serve.
(MC, 5/20/02)
1942 Aug 20, Isaac Hayes,
composer (Shaft), was born in Covington, TN.
(MC, 8/20/02)
1943 Jan 5, George Washington
Carver, Educator and scientist, died at age 81 at Tuskegee, Alabama.
Carver was born the son of a slave woman in the early 1860s, went to
college in Iowa and then headed to Alabama in 1896. There, at the
Tuskegee Institute, Carver served as an agricultural chemist,
experimenter, teacher and administrator, working to improve life for
African Americans in the rural South by teaching them better
agricultural skills. One of the farming methods Carver devised,
using peanut and soybean crops to enrich soil depleted by cotton
crops, revolutionized Southern farming. Carver became somewhat of a
benevolent example of the potential of black intellectuals. He was
well-respected by people such as President Franklin D. Roosevelt,
Mahatma Gandhi, Josef Stalin and Thomas Edison, whose offer of a job
for more than $100 a year Carver refused. Carver worked at Tuskegee
until his death.
(AP, 1/5/98)(HNPD, 1/5/99)
1943 May 25, Leslie Uggams,
singer, actress (Leslie Uggams Show, Roots), was born in NYC.
(SC, 5/25/02)
1943 May 25, There was a riot
at Mobile, Al., shipyard over upgrading 12 black workers.
(SC, 5/25/02)
1943 Jun 4, Race riots took
place in LA.
(MC, 6/4/02)
1943 Jun 20, Race-related
rioting erupted in Detroit; federal troops were sent in two days
later to quell the violence that resulted in 34 deaths and 600
wounded.
(AP, 6/20/97)(SSFC, 12/17/00, Par p.5)
1943 Jun 21, Federal troops put
down a race riot in Detroit that left 30 dead. [see Jun 20]
(MC, 6/21/02)
1943 Jul 2, The U.S. Army Air
Corps 99th Fighter Squadron, the first of the all-black Tuskegee
Airmen to see combat, had been based in Africa for four months when
they were assigned to escort 16 B-25 Mitchell bombers on a routine
mission over Sicilian targets. Lieutenant Charles B. Hall of Brazil,
Indiana became the first Tuskegee Airman to score a confirmed kill
when he shot down a German fighter plane.
(HNPD, 7/5/98)
1943 Jul 10, Arthur Ashe, first
black tennis player to win the U.S. Championship and Wimbledon, was
born.
(HN, 7/10/98)
1943 Aug 1, Race-related
rioting erupted in New York City's Harlem section, resulting in
several deaths.
(AP, 8/1/97)
1943 Nov 23, Andrew Goodman
(d.1964), murdered civil rights worker, was born.
(MC, 11/23/01)
1943 The film "Stormy Weather,"
an all-black musical, featured the tap dancing of the Nicholas
Brothers. Benny Carter (1907-2003) wrote arrangements and played on
the sound track.
(WSJ, 4/21/98, p.A21)(SFC, 7/5/00, p.A19)(SFC,
7/14/03, p.B4)
1943 Coast Guard Lt. Carlton
Skinner (d.2004) took command of the weather ship Sea Cloud, the 1st
fully integrated US naval warship.
(SSFC, 8/29/04, p.B7)
1943 The American Bar
Association (ABA) opened its ranks to black lawyers
(WSJ, 8/14/02, p.A1)
1944 Jan 26, Angela Davis,
American revolutionary and black militant, was born.
(HN, 1/26/99)
1944 Feb 9, Alice Walker,
Pulitzer prize winning author, was born. Her books include "The
Autobiography of Malcolm X" and "The Color Purple."
(HN, 2/9/99)
1944 Apr 3, The U.S. Supreme
Court ruled that black citizens are eligible to vote in all
elections, including primaries. The Smith vs. Allwright decision
ruled "white primaries" unconstitutional.
(HN, 4/3/01)(MC, 4/3/02)
1944 Apr 13, South Carolina
rejected black suffrage.
(MC, 4/13/02)
1944 Jul 17, An explosion at
Port Chicago, now the Concord Naval Weapons Station in Ca., killed
320 seamen when a pair of ammunition ships exploded. 10,000 tons of
ammunition exploded. 202 of the victims were black enlisted men. The
Navy court-martialed 50 black sailors for refusing to go back to
work after the catastrophe. They were released from prison in 1946
with dishonorable discharges and reductions in rank. The story was
later described by Robert Allen in his 1989 "The Port Chicago
Mutiny." In 1999 Pres. Clinton issued a pardon to Freddie Meeks, one
of the last living convicted African American sailors.
(SFEC, 3/2/97, z1 p.3)(SFC, 2/24/98, p.A15)(SFC,
12/24/99, p.A1)(SSFC, 2/6/05, Par p.6)
1944 Aug 10, Race riots took
place in Athens, Alabama.
(MC, 8/10/02)
1944 Aug 14, In Seattle, Wa., a
riot took place at Fort Lawton, following a scuffle between an
Italian prisoner and a black soldier. POW Guglielmo Olivotto was
found hanged the next day. In an ensuing trial 28 men were
convicted. In 2005 Jack Hamann and his wife Leslie authored “On
American Soil,“ which covered the riot and the subsequent events.
The convictions of the soldiers were overturned based largely on
shortcomings in the prosecution described in the book.
(SFC, 7/28/08,
p.A4)(www.historylink.org/essays/output.cfm?file_id=7378)
1944 Nov 1, Gen. Patton greeted
the 761st Tank Battalion, an all black unit, near Nancy, France.
They had no day off until linking Russian allies on May 5, 1945.
(SSFC, 5/30/04, p.B4)
1944 Gunnar Myrdal, Swedish
sociologist hired by the Carnegie Foundation, published his work:
"An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy." This
book shaped intellectual thought over the next four decades. It was
later criticized by authors Roberts and Stratton in their work: "The
new Color Line: How Quotas and Privilege Destroy Democracy."
(WSJ, 10/26/95, p.A-20)
1944 Adam Clayton Powell
(1908-1972) was elected as a Democrat to the US House of
Representatives, representing the 22nd congressional district, which
included Harlem. He was the first black Congressman from New York,
and the first from any Northern state other than Illinois in the
Post-Reconstruction Era.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Clayton_Powell_Jr.)
1944 The NAACP meeting in
Detroit held a symbolic funeral for Jim Crow.
(SFC, 7/10/07, p.A3)
1945 Mar 8, Phyllis Mae Daley
received a commission in the U.S. Navy Nurse Corps. She was the
first African-American nurse to serve duty in World War II.
(HN, 3/8/99)
1945 Mar 12, NY became the 1st
state to prohibit discrimination by race and creed in employment.
(MC, 3/12/02)
1945 Nov 1, John H. Johnson
(1919-2005) published the 1st issue of Ebony magazine. His weekly
Jet magazine was founded in 1951 and Ebony Man began in 1985.
(HN, 11/1/98)(SFC, 8/8/05, p.B4)
1945 The US Navy was officially
desegregated.
(SFC, 5/17/04, p.B4)
1945 African-American
paratroopers, as part of the 555th battalion (the Triple Nickle),
were assigned to Operation Firefly as smoke jumpers to disarm
explosives and extinguish fires in the Pacific Northwest.
(SSFC, 2/23/14, Par, p.18)
1945 Chester Himes authored "If
He Hollers Let Him Go," an exploration of work-place racism.
(SFC, 5/9/03, p.E7)
1946 Feb 26, A race riot in
Columbia, TN, killed 2 people and 10 wounded.
(SC, 2/26/02)
1946 Jun 3, US Supreme court
ruled that race separation on buses is unconstitutional.
(MC, 6/3/02)
1946 Jun 10, Jack Johnson, 1st
black heavyweight champion (1908-1915), died in car accident. In
2004 Geoffrey C. Ward authored “Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and
Fall of Jack Johnson.” In 2005 Ken Burns premiered the PBS
documentary: “Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack
Johnson.”
(SSFC, 11/7/04, p.M1)(SFC, 1/17/05, p.D6)
1946 Jun 24, Mary McLeod
Bethune was named director of the Division of Minority Affairs for
the National Youth Administration by President Franklin D.
Roosevelt. The well-known educator thus became the first Black woman
ever to head a US government agency.
(www.nps.gov/nr/twhp/wwwlps/lessons/135bethune/135facts1.htm)
1946 Jul 25, In Monroe,
Georgia, 2 black couples were killed by Ku Klux Klansmen. Pres.
Truman ordered an FBI investigation and 55 suspects were named in
the lynching of Roger and Dorothy Malcolm and George and Mae Murray
Dorsey, but no one was ever charged. Dorothy Malcolm was pregnant.
(SFC, 7/26/05, p.A5)
1946 Jul 26, President Truman
ordered the desegregation of all US forces.
(MC, 7/26/02)
1946 Dec 18, Stephen Biko,
South African anti-apartheid activist, was born.
(MC, 12/18/01)
1946 A US court case ruled that
race-based housing restrictions were illegal. Restrictions after WW
I had confined blacks in LA to the south and east sides creating
near-ghettos in areas such as Watts, Inglewood and Compton.
(Econ, 7/23/05, p.29)
1947 Jan 20, Josh Gibson (35),
Negro League slugger, died of a brain tumor.
(MC, 1/20/02)
1947 Feb 3, Percival Prattis
became the 1st black reporter in Congressional press gallery.
(MC, 2/3/02)
1947 Feb 23, Shakira Caine,
actress (Man Who be King), Miss Guyana (1967), was born in Guyana.
(MC, 2/23/02)
1947 Apr 10, Brooklyn Dodgers
president Branch Rickey announced he had purchased the contract of
Jackie Robinson from the Montreal Royals. John Sengstacke, black
publisher of the Chicago Defender, was instrumental in persuading
Mr. Rickey in his decision. In spite of intense pressure and
hostility, Robinson's athletic abilities earned him the Rookie of
the Year Award in 1947.
(AP, 4/10/97)(SFC, 1/12/98, p.A1)(HN, 4/10/01)
1947 Prof. John Hope Franklin
(1915-2009) authored “From Slavery to Freedom.”
(SSFC, 11/13/05, p.M6)(SFC, 3/26/09, p.B5)
1947 US Major Gen. James M.
Gavin made the Triple Nickel unit of African Americans a part of the
3rd Battalion of the 505th parachute Infantry Regiment in the 82nd
Airborne Division, creating what became recognized as the first
black unit to be permanently integrated into the army.
(SSFC, 2/23/14, Par. p.18)
1947 Walter S. Mack, president
of Pepsi-Cola, hired an all-black sales force led by Edward F. Boyd
to sell Pepsi directly to blacks.
(WSJ, 1/9/07, p.B1)
1948 Jan 12, The Supreme Court
ruled that states could not discriminate against law-school
applicants because of race. The case involved a black woman, Ada
Lois Sipuel (1924-1995), and she earned the right to attend law
school in previously segregated Oklahoma. Her lawyer was Thurgood
Marshall.
(AP,
1/12/98)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sipuel_v._Board_of_Regents_of_Univ._of_Okla)
1948 Feb 2, President Truman
urged congress to adopt a civil rights program.
(MC, 2/2/02)
1948 Feb 12, 1st Lt. Nancy
Leftenant became the 1st black in the army nursing corps.
(MC, 2/12/02)
1948 Mar 11, Reginald Weit
became the 1st black to play in the US Tennis Open.
(MC, 3/12/02)
1948 May 1, Glenn Taylor, Idaho
Senator, was arrested in Birmingham Alabama for trying to enter a
meeting through a door marked "for Negroes."
(MC, 5/1/02)
1948 May 3, The US Supreme
Court in Shelly v. Kraemer ruled that covenants prohibiting the sale
of real estate to blacks and other minorities were legally
unenforceable. The Supreme Court had allowed the practice in 1926.
(AP, 5/3/97)(Econ, 7/7/12, p.74)(SFC, 1/14/15,
p.A11)
1948 Aug 24, Edith Mae Irby
became the University of Arkansas' first African-American student.
(HN, 8/24/98)
1948 Oct 1, The California
Supreme Court in Perez v. Sharp voided a state statue banning
interracial marriages.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perez_v._Sharp)
1949 Jan 14, There was a
Black-Indian race rebellion in Durban, South Africa; 142 died.
(MC, 1/14/02)
1949 Jan 28, NY Giants signed
their 1st black players, Monte Irvin & Ford Smith.
(MC, 1/28/02)
1949 Mar 1, Joe Louis retired
as heavyweight boxing champion.
(SC, 3/1/02)
1949
Apr 1, "Happy Pappy" premiered on WENR-TV
in Chicago. It was the first televised all-black-cast variety show.
(www.tvacres.com/ethnic_afro_h.htm)
1949 Jun 3, Wesley Anthony
Brown became the 1st negro to graduate from US Naval Academy.
(MC, 6/3/02)
1949 Nov 13, Whoopi Goldberg,
[Caryn Johnson], actress (Color Purple, Burglar, Ghost), was born in
NYC.
(MC, 11/13/01)
1949 The interracial drama film
"Pinky" starred Jeanne Crain and Bert Conway (d.2002 at 87). It was
directed by Elia Kazan. It was banned in Marshall, Texas, but the
censoring ordnance was declared unconstitutional by the US Supreme
Court.
(SFEC, 3/14/99, p.D5)(SFC, 2/18/02, p.B6)(SFC,
12/15/03, p.A24)
1950 Jan 24, Jackie Robinson
signed highest contract ($35,000) in Dodger history.
(MC, 1/24/02)
1950 Feb 6, Natalie Cole,
vocalist (Pink Cadillac, Miss You Like Crazy, Mona Lisa), was born
in LA, Calif.
(MC, 2/6/02)
1950 Apr 3, Carter G. Woodson
(b.1875), black historian, died. Woodson is best known for is the
creation of what became "Black History Month," begun in 1926 as
"Negro History Week." The idea of learning more about black history
caught on in schools all over the country. Many scholars recognize
him as the “Father of Black History.” His work included “The Negro
in Our History” (1922).
(WSJ, 5/19/05,
p.D8)(www.biography.com/articles/Carter-G.-Woodson-9536515)
1950 Apr 25, Chuck Cooper
became the 1st black to play in the NBA.
(SS, 4/25/02)
1950 Apr 27, South Africa
passed the Group Areas Act, formally segregating races.
(HN, 4/27/98)(SFEC, 10/15/00, p.T8)
1950 May 1, Gwendolyn Brooks
became the first African American to win the Pulitzer Prize for her
book of poetry called "Annie Allen."
(HN, 5/1/99)
1950 May 13, Steveland Morris
Hardaway (AKA Stevie Wonder) was born prematurely, on this day in
Saginaw, Mi. Too much oxygen in the incubator caused the baby to
become permanently blind. At the age of ten, Little Stevie
Wonder, as he was called by Berry Gordy at Motown, was discovered
singing and playing the harmonica. He had many hits during his teens
including "Fingertips" and as an adult he has earned an Oscar and at
least sixteen Grammy Awards. He has stood up for civil rights,
campaigns against cancer, AIDS, drunk driving and the plight of
Ethiopians.
(MC, 5/13/02)
1950 Aug 22, Althea Gibson
became the first black tennis player to be accepted in competition
for the national championship.
(AP, 8/22/00)
1950 Dec 4, University of
Tennessee defied court rulings by rejecting five Negro applicants.
(HN, 12/4/98)
1950 Dec 4, In North Korea the
US Navy's first black pilot, Ensign Jesse Brown, was downed in his
fighter plane in the Jangjin Reservoir. Wing man Lt. j.g. Thomas
Hudner crashed landed his plane in a failed attempt to save Brown.
In 2013 Hudner returned to the site of the crash.
(AP, 7/19/13)
1950 Dec 10, Dr. Ralph J.
Bunche (b.1904) became the first African-American to receive the
Nobel Peace Prize.
(AP, 12/10/97)(HN, 12/10/98)
1951 Feb 16, NYC passed a bill
prohibiting racism in city-assisted housing.
(MC, 2/16/02)
1951 May 24, Racial segregation
in Washington D.C. restaurants was ruled illegal.
(HN, 5/24/98)
1951 Jul 12, A mob tried to
keep a black family from moving into all-white Cicero, Ill.
(MC, 7/12/02)
1951 Jul 14, The George
Washington Carver National Monument in Joplin, Missouri became the
first national park honoring an African American.
(HN, 7/14/98)
1951 Aug 22, Harlem
Globetrotters played in Olympic Stadium at Berlin before 75,052.
(MC, 8/22/02)
1951 Oct 4, Henrietta Lacks, a
black woman, died of cancer in Baltimore. Cells from her body,
later known as HeLa cells, were cultivated for research. In 1974 Dr.
Nelson-Rees (d.2009 at 80), a UC Berkeley geneticist, reported that
the HeLa cells had contaminated other cell cultures in laboratories
around the world. In 1986 Michael Gold authored “A Conspiracy of
Cells,” a chronicle of the Nelson-Rees study. In 2010 Rebecca Skloot
authored “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks.”
(SFC, 1/28/09, p.B10)(SSFC, 2/14/10,
p.F3)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henrietta_Lacks)
1951 South Carolina passed an
anti-lynching law in response to the mob murder of Willie Earle, who
was dragged from jail and gunned down in retaliation for the death
of a cabbie.
(SSFC, 5/18/03, p.A6)
1951 Oliver W. Hill
(1907-2007), a black lawyer, argued on behalf of students protesting
deplorable conditions at a high school for African Americans in
Farmville, Va. The case became one of 5 that were decided in the
1954 Supreme Court Brown vs. Board of Education decision.
(SFC, 8/6/07, p.A2)
1952 Mar 24, Great
demonstrations took place against apartheid in South Africa.
(MC, 3/24/02)
1952 Oct 2, Superior Judge
Melvyn I. Cronin ruled that the SF Housing Authority’s policy of
barring blacks from all but one permanent low-rent public housing
project was unconstitutional.
(SFC, 9/27/02, p.E2)
1952
Oct 26, Hattie McDaniel (b.1895) actress (Gone With the Wind), died
in Woodland Hills, Ca., of breast cancer. She was the first black
actor/actress to receive an Academy Award. In 2005 Jill Watts
authored “Hattie McDaniel: Black Ambition, White Hollywood.”
(www.imdb.com/name/nm0567408/)(SSFC, 10/30/05,
p.M3)
1952 Dec 30, Tuskegee Institute
reported 1952 as the 1st yr in the last 71 with no US lynchings.
(MC, 12/30/01)
1953 Jun 7, Four civics groups
demanded that the SF Housing Authority give up its insistence on
racial segregation.
(SFC, 6/6/03, p.E2)
1953 Aug 4, Black families
moved into the Trumbull Park housing project in Chicago.
(MC, 8/4/02)
1953 Rev. T.J. Jemison
organized a bus boycott in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. It was the 1st of
its kind a became a model for the 1955 Martin Luther King rebellion
in Montgomery, Ala.
(NW, 6/9/03, p/14)
1953 Thomas Watson Jr., the son
of IBM chief Thomas Watson, threatened to cancel plans for plants in
Kentucky and North Carolina if they could not be fully racially
integrated. State governors backed down and the plants opened 3
years later.
(Econ, 6/11/11, p.66)
1954 Jan 29, Oprah Winfrey,
actress, TV host (Color Purple, Oprah), was born in Mississippi.
(MC, 1/29/02)
1954 May 17, The US Supreme
Court unanimously ruled for school integration in the landmark
initiative of Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka. It helped
abolish de facto and de jure segregation that persisted throughout
the US. The Supreme Court ruled that racial segregation in public
schools is unconstitutional. The 12-page historic opinion was
written by Chief Justice Earl Warren. The case was Brown vs. Board
of Education and the result overturned the 1896 decision of Plessy
vs. Ferguson that proclaimed a doctrine of separate but equal. The
Plessy vs. Ferguson decision had allowed that as long as
accommodation existed, segregation did not constitute
discrimination, establishing the doctrine of "separate but equal."
In the Brown case, which involved elementary education, the Court
ruled unanimously that segregation in public education was a denial
of the equal protection of the laws.
(SFC, 5/12/96, p.A-6)(SFEC, 6/8/97, BR
p.8)(www.nationalcenter.org/brown.html)
1954 May 17, Blacks hailed the
Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka decision. Whites in the Deep
South called the day "Black Monday." A movement called Citizens’
Councils, led by Mississippi Circuit Court Judge Tom P. Brady, grew
to encompass virtually the state's entire white business class.
Council members published a book entitled “Black Monday” which
outlined their simple beliefs: African Americans were inferior to
whites and the races must remain separate. "If in one mighty voice
we do not protest this travesty on justice, we might as well
surrender," Brady wrote.
(www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/till/peopleevents/e_councils.html)(MT, summer
2003, p.19)
1954 Jul 17, The 1st major
league baseball game was played where a majority of a team was black
(Dodgers).
(MC, 7/17/02)
1954 Aug 23, The small
community of Charleston, Arkansas, became the first in the South to
end segregation in its schools. This was in response to the May 17
US Supreme Court ruling on Brown vs. Board of Education.
(Econ, 9/22/07,
p.44)(http://ideas.aetn.org/productions/virtualtours/lrcentral/10)
1954 Sep 1, Martin Luther King
Jr. (1929-1968) became pastor at the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in
Montgomery, Alabama.
(SFEM, 2/2/97, p.8)(ON, 4/2011, p.2)
1954 Sep 7-8, Integration of
public schools began in Washington DC and Baltimore, Md.
(HN,
9/7/98)(www.courtinfo.ca.gov/presscenter/timeline.htm)
1954-1963 This period of the civil rights era was
covered in Taylor Branch’s book: "Parting the Waters: American in
the King Years, 1954-1963."
(SFC, 3/26/02, p.A24)
1955 Mar 2, Claudette Colvin
refuses to give up her seat in Montgomery, Alabama, nine months b
Rosa Parks' famous arrest for the same offense.
(HN, 3/2/00)
1955 Mar 21, Walter White
(b.1893), African American leader, died. As executive secretary
(1931-1955) he built the NAACP into America’s most influential civil
rights organization. In 2008 Thomas Dyja authored “Walter White: The
Dilemma of Black Identity in America.”
(WSJ, 10/18/08,
p.W8)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Francis_White)
1955 May 18, Mary McLeod
Bethune (79), educator & civil rights leader, died.
(SC, 5/18/02)
1955 Aug 28, Emmett Till (14),
a black teenager from Chicago, was abducted from his uncle's home in
Money, Miss., by white men after he had supposedly whistled at
Carolyn Bryant, a white woman. Till’s beaten body was found three
days later. His left eye and an ear were missing, as were most of
his teeth. His nose was rushed and there was a hole in his right
temple. Eyewitnesses linked Carolyn’s husband Roy Bryant and
half-brother J.W. Milam to the murder. Bryant and Milam were
indicted Sep 10 for a trial on Sep 19. Both were acquitted by an
all-white jury. Bryant and Milan later confessed to the killing in a
magazine interview. The area was a cotton-trading center where the
white Citizens Councils maintained their regional headquarters. In
2004 the US Justice Dept. opened a criminal investigation into the
case. In 2005 the US Senate acknowledged a share in the boy’s death.
(AP, 8/28/99)(SFC, 5/11/04, p.A4)(SFC, 6/14/05,
p.A2)(SFC, 9/9/05, p.F5)(SFC, 3/17/06, p.A5)(SFC, 7/25/13, p.A20)
1955 Nov 20, The Maryland
National Guard was ordered desegregated.
(HN, 11/20/98)
1955 Dec 1, Rosa Parks (42), a
seamstress and secretary of the Montgomery NAACP, was arrested in
Montgomery, Alabama, as she sat in a section of a bus just behind
the area reserved for whites. She refused to move to the back the
bus, to accommodate a white male passenger, as ordered by driver
James F. Blake (d.2002 at 89) and defied the South’s segregationist
laws. This prompted the Dec. 5 bus boycott, a year-long boycott of
the buses by blacks, and launched the Civil Rights movement in the
United States. Virginia Durr (d.1999 at 95) helped a black civil
rights leader bail Parks out of jail. In 1985 Durr wrote her memoir:
"Outside the Magic Circle." In 1999 Pres. Clinton authorized a
Congressional Gold Medal for Rosa Parks.
(SFC, 5/12/96, p.A-6)(SFEC, 9/15/96, p.A2)(SFEM,
2/2/97, p.8)(AP, 12/1/97)(SFC, 3/10/99, p.A23)(SFC, 5/5/99,
p.A3)(SFC, 3/26/02, p.A24)
1955 Dec 5, The Montgomery,
Alabama, bus boycott began in an effort to overturn the city’s bus
segregation law. It was organized in part by Jo Ann Robinson
(1912-1992), Fred D. Grey, E.D. Nixon, Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
and others, following the Dec 1 arrest of Rosa Parks, who had
refused give up her seat to a white male passenger and move to the
back. Black residents chose Mr. King to head The Montgomery
Improvement Association, formed to sustain the protest against
segregation policies on the municipal buses.
(ON, 4/2011, p.2)(SFEM, 2/2/97, p.8)
1955 Dec 9, Sugar Ray Robinson
won the middle-weight boxing crown for the third time when he
knocked out Carl "Bobo" Olson.
(SFC, 6/29/96, p.E4)(HN, 12/9/98)
1956 Feb 3, Autherine Lucy
(b.1929) arrived at the Tuscaloosa branch of the Univ. of Alabama
and became the first black person to enroll there. She had been
accepted in 1952 and then was denied because of her race.
(http://www.answers.com/topic/autherine-lucy-foster)
1956 Feb 6, The Univ. of
Alabama board of trustees voted to suspend Autherine Lucy, the 1st
black admitted to school, on the grounds that the campus was no
longer safe for her.
(http://www.answers.com/topic/autherine-lucy-foster)
1956 Apr 11, Singer Nat Cole
was attacked on stage of Birmingham theater by whites.
(MC, 4/11/02)
1956 Apr 23, US Supreme court
ended race segregation on buses.
(MC, 4/23/02)
1956 May 2, US Methodist church
disallowed race separation.
(MC, 5/2/02)
1956 Aug 30, A white mob
prevented the enrollment of blacks at Mansfield HS, Texas.
(MC, 8/30/01)
1956 Nov 13, The U.S. Supreme
Court struck down the Alabama bus segregation law. The Supreme Court
struck down laws calling for racial segregation on public buses.
(AP, 11/13/97)(HN, 11/13/98)
1956 Dec 6, Nelson Mandela and
156 others were arrested for political activities in South Africa.
They were charged with treason for supporting the Freedom Charter,
which called for a non-racial and socialist-based economy.
(MC, 12/6/01)(SFC, 12/6/13, p.A18)
1956 Dec 20, The Supreme Court
affirmed the Jun 5 decision against segregation on buses in
Montgomery, Alabama. Montgomery removed race-based seat assignments
on its buses.
(SFEM, 1/19/97, BR p.8)(SFEM, 2/2/97,
p.12,13)(ON, 4/2011, p.4)
1956 Dec 24, African Americans
defied a city law in Tallahassee, Fla., and occupied front bus
seats.
(HN, 12/24/98)
1956 Kenneth Stampp
(1913-2009), US Berkeley historian, authored “The Peculiar
Institution: Slavery in the Antebellum South.”
(SFC, 7/22/09, p.D5)
1957 Jan 10, Rev. Martin Luther
King Jr. organized the Southern Christian Leadership Conference
(SCLC) to fight facial segregation by means of nonviolent protests.
In 1986 David J. Garrow authored “Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther
King Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.”
(ON, 4/2011, p.4,5)
1957 Jan 23, Willie Edwards
(25), US black, was murdered by KKK.
(MC, 1/23/02)
1957 Feb 14, The Georgia Senate
approved Sen Leon Butts' bill barring blacks from playing baseball
with whites.
(HN, 2/14/98)(MC, 2/14/02)
1957 Feb 14, The “Southern
Leadership Conference” was formed in New Orleans, Louisiana.
Officers were elected which included: Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. as
President, Dr. Ralph David Abernathy as Financial
Secretary-Treasurer, Rev. C. K. Steele of Tallahassee, Florida as
Vice President, Rev. T. J. Jemison of Baton Rouge, Louisiana as
Secretary, and Attorney I. M. Augustine of New Orleans, Louisiana as
General Counsel. In August the name was changed to "Southern
Christian Leadership Conference" at its first convention in
Montgomery, Alabama.
(http://sclcnational.org/net/content/item.aspx?s=25461.0.12.2607)
1957 May 22, South Africa
government approved race separation in universities.
(MC, 5/22/02)
1957 Jun 17, The Tuskegee
boycott began as Blacks boycotted city stores.
(MC, 6/17/02)
1957 Aug 29, Congress passed
the Civil Rights Act of 1957. South Carolina Sen. Strom Thurmond
(then a Democrat) ended a filibuster against a civil rights bill
after talking for 24 hours and 18 minutes. Arnold Aronson (d.1998 at
86) help to lobby for the bill. [see Aug 30]
(AP, 8/29/97)(SFC, 2/20/98, p.A23)(SSFC,
12/17/00, Par p.15)(MC, 8/29/01)
1957 Aug 30, In an effort to
stall the Civil Rights Act of 1957 from passing, Senator Strom
Thurmond (D-S.C.) filibustered for over 24 hours. The bill passed,
but Thurmond’s filibuster becomes the longest in Senate history.
[see Aug 29]
(HN, 8/30/00)
1957 Sep 4, Arkansas National
guardsmen turned away Black students from Central High School in
Little Rock. 9 students made it into the school on September 24
under the protection of federal troops sent by Pres. Eisenhower. In
2007 Elizabeth Jacoway authored “Turn Away Thy Son: Little Rock, the
Crises That Shocked the Nation.”
(AH, 10/07, p.61)
1957 Sep 23, Nine black
students who had entered Little Rock Central High School in Arkansas
were forced to withdraw because of a white mob outside. Pres.
Eisenhower signed Executive Order 10730 to send Federal troops to
maintain order and peace while the integration of Central High
School in Little Rock, AR, took place.
(AP,
9/23/97)(www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=true&doc=89)
1957 Sep 24, President Dwight
D. Eisenhower sent federal troops into Little Rock, Arkansas, to
protect nine black students entering its newly integrated high
school.
(HN, 9/24/98)
1957 Sep 25, With 300 members
of the U.S. Army's 101st Airborne Division standing guard, nine
black children forced to withdraw from Central High School in Little
Rock, Ark., because of unruly white crowds, were escorted to class.
Vice principle Elizabeth Huckaby (d.1999 at 93) escorted the
children and in 1980 published "Crisis at Central High."
(SFC, 3/26/99, p.D5)(AP, 9/25/07)
1958 May 27, Ernest Green and
600 whites graduated from Little Rock's Central High School. Green
became the first black Central High graduate.
(http://tinyurl.com/qyjp4)(www.centralhigh57.org/1957-58.htm)
1958 Jun, Richard Loving, a
white man, and Mildred Jeter, of African American and American
Indian ancestry, traveled from Caroline County, Va., to marry in
Washington, DC. Upon returning home they were arrested for violating
the state’s 1924 Racial Integrity Act. Their one year sentenced was
suspended on condition that they leave the state.
(SFC, 2/14/12, p.E4)
1958 Aug 4, Mary Decker
Stanley, winner of seven track and field records, was born.
(HN, 8/4/98)
1958 Aug 29, Michael Jackson,
pop singer, entertainer, was born.
(HN, 8/29/98)
1958 Sep 20, Rev. Martin Luther
King was stabbed by Izola Curry, a deranged woman, during a book
signing on 125th St. in Harlem. Dr. Aubre De Lambert Maynard (d.1999
at 97) performed a successful operation on King who had a knife
embedded in his sternum. Curry was later found mentally incompetent.
(SFC, 3/25/99, p.C3)(AP, 9/20/08)
1958 Oct 5, Racially
desegregated Clinton High School in Clinton, Tenn., was mostly
leveled by an early morning bombing.
(AP, 10/5/08)
1958 Caryl Phillips, writer,
was born in the West Indies. He later authored "The Atlantic Sound,"
a look at 3 major ports of the slave trade.
(SSFC, 6/16/02, p.M2)
1959 Jun, Supervisors of Prince
Edward County, Va., passed a $210,654 budget that provided no money
for public schools and cut the property tax in half rather than
comply with school desegregation. The public schools closed down for
5 years. The county whites opened a tuition-free, private academy
for white children.
(WSJ, 5/17/04, p.A1)
1959 In San Francisco Dorothy
and Art Adams, a black couple, purchased a house in the Westwood
Park area of San Francisco, but were not allowed to move in for six
months due to Article XIII of the neighborhood’s declaration of
Covenants, Codes and Restrictions, despite the 1948 Supreme Court
ruling declaring them unenforceable.
(SFC, 1/14/15, p.A11)
1959-1963 S. Ernest Vandiver served as governor of
Georgia. His campaign motto was "No, not one," meaning not one black
child in a white school.
(SSFC, 12/22/02, p.A3)
1960 Feb 1, Four black North
Carolina A&T students staged a sit-in in a dime store in
Greensboro, NC, lunch counter, where they'd been refused service, to
begin the first of the historic 1960s sit-ins.
(AP, 2/1/97)(AH, 2/05, p.16)
1960 Mar 1, 1,000 Black
students prayed and sang the national anthem on the steps of the old
Confederate Capitol in Montgomery, Ala.
(HN, 3/1/98)
1960 Mar 21, A police massacre
in Sharpeville, South Africa, left 69 black protestors dead as
people gathered to protest the pass books that the apartheid
government required them to carry at all times. The ANC was
outlawed.
(SFC, 12/5/96, p.C2)(SFEC, 2/9/97, Z1 p.7)(AP,
3/21/08)
1960 Apr 10, The US Senate
passed a landmark Civil Rights Bill.
(HN, 4/10/98)
1960 Jul 31, Elijah Muhammad,
leader of Nation of Islam, called for a black state.
(MC, 7/31/02)
1960 Aug 7, Students staged
kneel-in demonstrations in Atlanta churches.
(MC, 8/7/02)
1960 Aug 9, There was a race
riot in Jacksonville Florida.
(MC, 8/9/02)
1960 Aug 25, The 17th
summer Olympics opened in Rome. Wilma Rudolph (1940-1994), was the
first African American to win three gold medals in a single
Olympiad. Her athleticism was remarkable since Rudolph contracted
polio as a small child and spent six years in a steel brace. With
therapy and hard work, Rudolph overcame her handicap to excel in
basketball and track. As a celebrity, she worked to break many
gender and racial barriers. Rudolph died of brain cancer.
(WSJ, 7/19/96, p.R6)(HN, 6/23/98)(chblue.com,
8/25/01)
1960 Nov 13, Sammy Davis Jr.
married Swedish actress May Britt.
(MC, 11/13/01)
1960 Nov 14, New Orleans
integrated two all white schools. Ruby Bridges, a 6-year-old black
girl, entered a previously all-white school flanked by 4 federal
marshals before a phalanx of angry racists. A 1998 Disney movie
"Ruby Bridges" portrayed the event, which was captured by Norman
Rockwell in his painting: "The Problem We all Live With."
(WSJ, 1/8/98, p.A7)(HN, 11/14/98)
1960 Zora Neale Hurston
(b.1903), black author, died. Her 1942 autobiography was titled
"Dust Tracks on a Road." In 1977 Robert Hemenway authored a
biography of Hurston. In 2002 Cora Kaplan edited "Zora Neale
Hurston: A Life in Letters." In 2002 Valerie Boyd authored the
biography "Wrapped in Rainbows."
(WSJ, 12/20/02, p.W8)(SSFC, 12/29/02, p.M1)
1961 Jan 11, There was a race
riot at the University of Georgia.
(MC, 1/11/02)
1961 Jan 31, In South Carolina
10 black men were arrested for ordering lunch from a whites-only
counter at McCrory’s variety store in Greensboro. One man paid a
fine and the rest became known as the “Friendship Nine.” In 2015
prosecutors sought to vacate their arrests and convictions.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friendship_Nine)(SFC, 1/28/15, p.A10)
1961 Mar 27, In San Francisco
the hiring of the city’s first Negro milk route driver precipitated
name calling an argument between Mayor George Christopher and Terry
Francois, head of the local NAACP. The mayor said Teamsters Local
226 would not let Negroes into the union. Christopher, owner of
Christopher Dairy Farms, had hired William Garrick (24) to run a
route in South San Francisco serving schools and restaurants.
(SSFC, 3/27/11, DB p.42)
1961 Mar 29, In South Africa
Nelson Mandela was acquitted on a treason charge after a 4 year
trial .
(MC, 3/29/02)
1961 May 4, A
group of 13 CORE civil rights activists, dubbed "Freedom Riders"
left Washington, D.C., for New Orleans to challenge racial
segregation on buses and in bus terminals.
(AP, 5/4/97)(HN, 5/4/98)(MC, 5/4/02)
1961 May 13, Dennis Rodman, NBA
forward (Chicago Bulls), was born.
(MC, 5/13/02)
1961 May 14, Bus with 1st group
of Freedom Riders was bombed and burned in Alabama.
(MC, 5/14/02)
1961 May 20, A white mob
attacked a busload of "Freedom Riders" in Montgomery, Ala.,
prompting the federal government to send in U.S. marshals to restore
order.
(AP, 5/20/97)(HN, 5/20/98)
1961 May 24, The 27 Freedom
Riders, civil rights activists, were arrested in Jackson,
Mississippi.
(HN, 5/24/98)(MC, 5/24/02)
1961 May 26, Civil rights
activist group Freedom Ride Coordinating Committee was established
in Atlanta.
(HN, 5/26/98)
1961 May 28, SF lawyer Willie
Brown (27) charged that he has been rebuffed by salesmen while
trying to look at a model home in the Forest Knolls tract of San
Francisco.
(SSFC, 5/29/11, DB p.46)
1961 Aug 16, Martin Luther King
protested for black voting rights in Miami.
(MC, 8/16/02)
1961 Dec 12, Martin Luther King
Jr & 700 demonstrators were arrested in Albany, Ga.
(MC, 12/12/01)
1961 In South Africa Nelson
Mandela helped establish the ANC guerrilla wing, Umkhonto we Sizwe
(Spear of the nation).
(SFC, 12/6/13, p.A18)
1962 Jan 23, Jackie Robinson
(1919-1972) became the first African-American elected to Baseball
Hall of Fame.
(www.imdb.com/name/nm0732697/bio)
1962 Feb 26, US Supreme court
disallowed race separation on public transportation.
(SC, 2/26/02)
1962 Mar 10, The Phillies
baseball club left the Jack Tar Harrison Hotel due to its no black
policy and moved to Rocky Point Motel, 20 miles outside Clearwater,
Florida.
(http://tinyurl.com/mdtvxu)
1962 Jul 10, Martin Luther King
Jr. was arrested during a demonstration in Georgia.
(MC, 7/10/02)
1962 Jul 21, 160 civil right
activists were jailed after demonstration in Albany, Ga.
(MC, 7/21/02)
1962 Jul 27, Martin Luther King
Jr. was jailed in Albany, Georgia.
(MC, 7/27/02)
1962 Aug 5, In South Africa
Nelson Mandela was arrested near Howick and charged with illegally
leaving the country and incitement to strike. He was later sentenced
to five years of hard labor.
(SFC, 12/6/13, p.A18)
1962 Aug 15, Shady Grove
Baptist Church was burned in Leesburg, Georgia.
(MC, 8/15/02)
1962 Sep 20, Black student
James Meredith was blocked from enrolling at the University of
Mississippi by Governor Ross R. Barnett. Meredith was later
admitted. A Life Magazine photograph around this time showed 7
sheriffs gathered at Ole Miss to keep Meredith out. In 2003 Paul
Hendrickson authored "Sons of Mississippi: A Story of Race and Its
Legacy," in which he uncovered the lives of the 7 sheriffs.
(AP, 9/20/97)(SSFC, 4/6/03, p.M1)
1962 Sep 30, Black student
James Meredith succeeded on his fourth try in registering for
classes at the University of Mississippi. He became the first black
to enroll at Old Miss Univ. and 13,500 Federal troops were required
to back him up. U.S. Marshals escorted James H. Meredith into the
University of Mississippi; two died in the mob violence that
followed. Meredith was also noted for starting the "March Against
Fear" to encourage voter registration by Southern African Americans.
While on the march he was hit with a snipers bullet. Other Civil
Rights leaders including MLK continued the march. Meredith was able
to complete the march in Jackson, Mississippi.
(TMC, 1994, p.1962)(AP, 9/30/97)(HN, 9/30/98)
1962 Nov 6, Saudi Arabia
abolished slavery.
(www.hrw.org/reports/1992/saudi/INTROTHR.htm)
1962 Ralph Ginzburg
(1929-2006), NYC journalist, authored “100 Years of Lynchings,” a
chronicle of racist hangings in the South.
(SFC, 7/7/06, p.B9)
1962 William Matney Jr. (d.2001
at 76) became the 1st black reporter and writer for the Detroit
News. In 1963 he was recruited by NBC News as their 1st black
correspondent.
(SSFC, 6/17/01, p.A27)
1962 Augustus F. Hawkins
(1907-2007) of south Los Angeles became the first black person from
California to be elected to the US Congress.
(SFC, 11/13/07, p.D9)
1963 Jan 14, George C. Wallace
was sworn in as governor of Alabama with a pledge of "segregation
forever."
(AP, 1/14/98)
1963 Mar 18, Vanessa L.
Williams, 1st black Miss America (1983), singer, was born in
Millwood, NY.
(MC, 3/18/02)
1963 Apr 2, Reverend Dr. Martin
Luther King began the first non-violent campaign in Birmingham,
Alabama.
(AP, 4/2/99)
1963 Apr 12, Police used dogs
and cattle prods on peaceful civil rights demonstrators in
Birmingham, Alabama.
(HN, 4/12/98)
1963 Apr 27, San Francisco real
estate developer Marvin L. Sheldon said he wants no negroes in any
of the homes he has built in Golden Gate Heights. He recently
rejected a $39,950 offer by Wilt Chamberlain, star of the San
Francisco Warriors, for a home.
(SSFC, 4/28/13, p.50)
1963 May 3, In Birmingham,
Alabama, police Commissioner Bull Connor unleashed dogs and
high-powered fire hoses on boycott-bound school children.
(SFEC, 3/16/97, p.T5)
1963 May 11, Racial bomb
attacks took place in Birmingham, Alabama.
(MC, 5/11/02)
1963 May 12, There was a race
riot in Birmingham, Alabama.
(MC, 5/12/02)
1963 Jun 11, JFK said
segregation is morally wrong & that it is "time to act."
(SC, 6/11/02)
1963 Jun 12, Medgar Evers (37),
leader (field director) of the NAACP in Mississippi, was fatally
shot in front of his home in Jackson by the KKK. An informant in the
KKK, Delmar Dennis (1940-1996), later served as a key prosecution
witness in convicting Byron De La Beckwith (d.2001 at 80) for the
slaying. A book by Bill McIlhany titled "Klandestine" recounts the
story. In 1996 Whoopi Goldberg starred in the film "Ghosts of
Mississippi" as the widow of Medgar Evers. In 1998 Willie Morris
wrote "The Ghosts of Medgar Evers: A Tale of Race, Murder,
Mississippi, and Hollywood."
(SFC, 6/5/96, p.C5)(NYT, 6/7/96, p.B14)(AP,
6/12/97)(SFEC, 2/1/98, BR p.5)(SFC, 1/22/01, p.A22)
1963 Jun 18, 3,000 blacks
boycotted Boston public school.
(MC, 6/18/02)
1963 Aug 11, The Metropolitan
Life Insurance Co. said San Francisco’s Parkmerced community, with a
population of some 8,000, will be open to negroes.
(SSFC, 8/11/13, DB p.42)
1963 Aug 19, NAACP Youth
Council began sit-ins at lunch counters in Oklahoma City.
(MC, 8/19/02)
1963 Aug 27, William Edward
Burghardt Du Bois (b.1868), sociologist, influential leader of black
Americans, founder of the National Negro Committee which eventually
became the National Association for the Advancement of Colored
People, died in Accra, Ghana at the age of 95. He coined the phrase
"double consciousness" to describe the black survival skill of
moving between the black and white American culture.
(WUD, 1994, p.439)(SFEC, 3/22/98, BR p.5)(HNPD,
2/23/99)(HNQ, 5/11/99)
1963 Aug 28, The civil rights
March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom drew 200-250,000
demonstrators and was the occasion for King’s "I Have a Dream"
speech in front of the Lincoln Memorial. It was organized by Bayard
Rustin (1912-1987). In 1997 a biography of Rustin by Jervis Anderson
was published: "Bayard Rustin: The Troubles I’ve Seen." The 1997
play "Civil Sex" by Brian Freeman was based on Rustin’s life. Rev.
Thomas Kilgore Jr. (d.1998 at 84) helped organize the march on
Washington. Martin Luther King led marches on Washington and Selma,
Alabama. His chief lieutenant was Andrew Young who in 1996 wrote:
"An Easy Burden: The Civil Rights Movement and the Transformation of
America."
(WSJ, 11/6/96, p.A21)(SFEC, 1/26/97 BR, p.4)(WSJ,
1/30/97, p.A14)(AP, 8/28/97)(SFC, 2/7/98, p.21)(HN, 8/28/98)
1963 Sep 2, Alabama Gov. George
C. Wallace prevented the integration of Tuskegee High School by
encircling the building with state troopers.
(AP, 9/2/97)(HN, 9/2/98)
1963 Sep 10, 20 black students
entered public schools in Birmingham, Tuskegee and Mobile, Ala.,
following a standoff between federal authorities and Gov. George C.
Wallace. President John F. Kennedy federalized Alabama's National
Guard to prevent Governor George C. Wallace from using guardsmen to
stop public-school desegregation.
(AP, 9/10/97)(HN, 9/10/98)
1963 Oct 9, In South Africa
indictments began for the Rivonia trial and resulted in the jailing
of Nelson Mandela and Govan Mbeki. In 1999 Glenn Frankel authored
"Rivonia's Children." White activists (Joe Slovo and his wife Ruth
First, Rusty and Hilda Bernstein, and Anna Marie and Harold Wolpe)
of the South African Communist Party, involved in the trial, fled
into exile. The trial was named after the area where the ANC members
were arrested.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rivonia_Trial)(WSJ,
10/4/99, p.A40)(SFC, 7/18/02, p.A26)(SFC, 12/6/13, p.A18)
1963 Nov 3, San Francisco
police arrested 48 protesters at Mel’s Drive-In at 3355 Geary Blvd.
They claimed that Mel’s, owned by Supervisor Harold Dobbs, refuses
to hire Negroes for non-menial jobs.
(SSFC, 11/3/13, DB p.42)
1964 Jan 26, Eighty-four people
were arrested in a segregation protest in Atlanta.
(HN, 1/26/99)
1964 Feb 24, Cassius Clay
defeated Sonny Liston for the heavyweight boxing title.
(TMC, 1994, p.1964)(MC, 2/24/02)
1964 Mar 1, In San Francisco
demonstrations began at the Sheraton-Palace Hotel over racial hiring
practices.
(SFC, 3/1/14, p.A1)
1964 Mar 3, In San Francisco
two days after protests at the Palace Hotel, demonstrators gathered
to protest the hiring practices of the Cadillac salesroom on Van
Ness. Student activist, Terence Hallinan, was arrested in a 2-day of
protest against racial discrimination in hiring at the Sheraton
Palace Hotel.
(SFEC, 10/20/96, BR, p.6)(SFEM, 11/17/96, p.27)
1964 Mar 8, Malcolm X left the
Black Muslim Movement. [see Mar 12]
(MC, 3/8/02)
1964 Mar 12, Malcolm X resigned
from Nation of Islam. [see Mar 8]
(MC, 3/12/02)
1964 May 2, In Mississippi
Charles Moore (19) and Henry Dee (19) were beaten and killed by
local members of the Ku Klux Klan. Their mutilated bodies were later
found in the Mississippi River while federal authorities searched
for civil rights workers Goodman, Chaney and Schwerner. Charles
Marcus Edwards and James Ford Seale were arrested for the crime, but
neither was tried. In 2007 James Ford Seale (71) was arrested and
charged with two counts of kidnapping and one count of conspiracy to
commit kidnapping. In 2008 an appeals court ruled that the statue of
limitations had expired overturning Seale’s conviction.
(SFC, 7/15/05, p.A5)(AP, 1/25/07)(AP,
1/26/07)(www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26633038/)
1964 Jun, Some 700 young
Americans began descending on Mississippi to teach in “freedom
schools” and register black voters. In 2010 Bruce Watson authored
“Freedom Summer: The Savage Season that made Mississippi Burn and
Made America a Democracy.”
(Econ, 6/12/10, p.92)
1964 Jun 21, Three young civil
rights workers, Andrew Goodman 20, Michael Schwerner 24, and James
Chaney 21, disappeared near Meridian, Mississippi. Their car was
found burning late in the day. 40 days later their bodies were found
buried in an earthen dam near Philadelphia, Miss. 8 Klansman went to
prison on federal conspiracy charges but none served more than 6
years, and murder charges were never filed. The event inspired the
1988 film Mississippi Burning. In 2005 Edgar Ray Killen (80) was
arrested in Philadelphia, Miss., and convicted of manslaughter in
the abduction and killing of the 3 voter-registration volunteers. He
was sentenced to three 20-year terms. Billy Wayne Posey (73), a key
suspect in the killings, died in 2009.
(SFEC, 2/16/97, p.A12)(AP, 6/21/97)(HN,
6/21/01)(SFC, 6/22/05, p.A1)(WSJ, 6/24/05, p.A1)(SSFC, 8/16/09,
p.A9)
1964 Jun 29, Civil Rights Act
of 1964 was passed after 83-day filibuster in Senate. [see Jul 2]
(MC, 6/29/02)
1964 Jul 18, Riots erupted in
the African American communities of NYC and Rochester, NY. The NYC
race riot began in Harlem and spread to Bedford-Stuyvesant in
Brooklyn.
(SSFC, 6/9/02, p.F5)(MC, 7/18/02)
1964 Jul 24-27, A race riot
took place in Rochester, New York, and 4 people were killed.
(MC, 7/24/02)
1964 Jul 25, There was a race
riot in Rochester, NY.
(SC, 7/25/02)
1964 Aug 2, There was a race
riot in Jersey City, NJ.
(MC, 8/2/02)
1964 Aug 11, There was a race
riot in Paterson, NJ.
(MC, 8/11/02)
1964 Aug 12, There was a race
riot in Elizabeth, NJ.
(SC, 8/12/02)
1964 Aug 15, A race riot took
place in Dixmoor, a suburb of Chicago, Ill.
(MC, 8/15/02)
1964 Aug 28, Race riots took
place in Philadelphia.
(MC, 8/28/01)
1964 Dec 1, M.L. King spoke to
J. Edgar Hoover about his slander campaign.
(MC, 12/1/01)
1964 H. Rep Brown 1st signed up
with the Student Nonviolating Coordinating Committee and registering
voters.
(SSFC, 1/6/02, p.A13)
1965 Jan 2, Dr. Martin Luther
King Jr began a drive to register black voters.
(MC, 1/2/02)
1965 Feb 1, In Selma, Alabama,
Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. and 770 of his followers were
arrested on their civil rights march. They protested against voter
discrimination in Alabama.
(SFEC, 3/16/97, p.T1)(HN, 2/1/99)
1965 Feb 14, Malcolm X’s home
was firebombed. No injuries were reported.
(HN, 2/14/98)
1965 Feb 18, Alabama police
were sent to Marion as some 500 people marched from a church toward
the city jail to protest the jailing of a civil rights worker.
Street lights went out and troopers began swinging clubs on the
marchers. Jimmie Lee Jackson (26) was shot while aiding his
grandfather (82) and mother. Jackson died 2 days later. In 2007
trooper James Bonard Fowler was indicted for the shooting death of
Jackson. In 2010 Fowler (77) pleaded guilty to 2nd degree
manslaughter and was sentenced to 6 months in jail.
(SFC, 5/10/07, p.A3)(SFC, 11/16/10, p.A17)
1965 Feb 21, Former Black
Muslim leader El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, aka Malcolm X (born as
Malcolm Little, 39), was shot to death in front of 400 people in New
York by assassins identified as Black Muslims. He was murdered at
the Audubon Ballroom in Manhattan. His wife, Betty Shabazz, was
pregnant with twins and sat in the audience along with his
4-year-old daughter Quibilah. Three men, Norman 3X Butler (Abdul
Aziz), Khalil Islam, and Thomas Hagan, connected to the Nation of
Islam were convicted for the assassination. Aziz was paroled in 1985
and in 1998 was appointed by Louis Farrakhan to head a Harlem
mosque. In 1992 James H. Cone authored a book about Malcolm X and
Martin Luther King. In 2011 Manning Marable authored “Malcolm X: A
Life of Reinvention.”
(SFC, 6/24/97, p.A3)(AP, 2/21/98)(SFC, 3/26/98,
p.A3)(SFC, 9/8/99, p.A7)(Econ, 4/9/11, p.94)
1965 Feb 26, Jimmie Lee
Jackson, civil rights activist, died of injuries.
(SC, 2/26/02)
1965 Mar 7, A march by some 600
civil rights demonstrators was broken up in Selma, Ala., by state
troopers and posse under Sheriff Jim Clark (d.2007). The Black
community of Marion, Ala., marched to protest the earlier killing of
a demonstrator by a state trooper. John Lewis, later US
Representative, led the march and was hit in the head by a state
trooper.
(AP, 3/7/98)(SFC, 3/8/99, p.A9)(SFC, 11/27/99,
p.C3)(Econ, 6/16/07, p.99)
1965 Mar 11, The Rev. James J.
Reeb (65), a white minister from Boston, died after whites beat him
during civil rights disturbances in Selma, Ala.
(AP, 3/11/98)(MC, 3/12/02)
1965 Mar 21, Martin Luther King
Jr. led more than 3,000 civil rights demonstrators on the 50-mile
march from Selma to Montgomery.
(SFEC, 3/16/97, p.T1)(AP, 3/21/97)
1965 Mar 25, Martin Luther King
Jr. led a group of 25,000 to the state capital in Montgomery Ala. to
protest the denial of voting rights to blacks. Civil Rights
pressures increased in the US and blacks and whites marched in Selma
and Montgomery.
(TMC, 1994, p.1965)(AP, 3/25/97)(HN, 3/24/98)
1965 Mar 25, Viola Liuzzo
(b.1925), a white civil rights worker from Detroit, was shot and
killed by the Ku Klux Klan on a road near Selma, Ala. The later
trial of Collie Leroy Jenkins, one of 3 men charged in the killing,
ended in a hung jury. Jenkins was also acquitted at a 2nd trial but
was later convicted along with Eugene Thomas of civil rights
violations in federal court and sentenced to 10 years in prison.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viola_Liuzzo)(SSFC,
7/20/08, p.B6)
1965 Apr 2, Rodney King, black
motorist brutally beaten by LA cops, was born in Sacramento, Calif.
(MC, 4/2/02)
1965 Apr 13, Lawrence Wallace
Bradford Jr. (16) was appointed by New York Republican Jacob Javits
to be the first black page of the US Senate.
(AP, 4/13/02)
1965 May 30, Vivian Malone
(later Vivian Malone Jones) became the first black graduate of the
University of Alabama with a degree in Business Management.
(NYT, 10/14/2005, p.C15)
1965 Aug 12, There was a race
riot in West Side of Chicago.
(SC, 8/12/02)
1965 Dec 1, South Africa
government said children of white fathers are white.
(MC, 12/1/01)
1965 Morrie Turner (1923-2014)
unveiled his “Wee Palls” (1965) cartoon strip. He was the first
African American cartoonist to draw a nationally syndicated strip
exploring racial themes during the peak of the civil rights movement
and beyond.
(SFC, 1/29/14, p.E1)
1965 Ron Karenga founded US, a
black power movement in Southern California shortly after the Watts
riots. In 2003 Scot Brown authored "Fighting for US: Maulana
Karenga, the US Organization and Black Cultural Nationalism."
(SSFC, 8/3/03, p.M6)
1965 Daniel Patrick Moynihan
(1927-2003), while employed under Pres. Kennedy at the Dept. of
Labor, authored a report that attributed problems among blacks
to the deterioration of the family structure. In this year 8% of
children were born to unmarried parents. By 2006 a third of all US
children were born to unmarried parents as well as nearly 70% of
black children.
(SFC, 3/27/03, p.A15)(WSJ, 11/20/06, p.A1)
1966 Jan 10, In Mississippi
Vernon Dahmer, a revered civil rights leader, was killed in a
firebombing. In 1998 Klansmen Sam Bowers (73), Deavours Nix (72) and
Charles Noble (55) were arrested for the murder. 8 men in 2 cars
loaded with shotguns and 12 gallons of gasoline attacked Dahmer’s
home. Billy Roy Pitts participated and later testified how Bowers
had called meetings and presided over the planning of the bombing.
Bowers was convicted in his 5th trial and sentenced to life in
prison.
(SFC, 5/29/98, p.A5)(SFC, 8/17/98, p.A5)(SFC,
8/20/98, p.A12)(WSJ, 8/24/98, p.A1)
1966 Jan 13, Robert C. Weaver
became the first black Cabinet member as he was appointed Secretary
of Housing and Urban Development by President Johnson.
(AP, 1/13/98)
1966 Jan 18, Robert Clifton
Weaver (1907-1997), the 1st African-American to hold a post in the
presidential cabinet, was sworn in as head of the newly created
Department of Housing and Urban Development under Pres. Johnson.
(MC, 1/18/02)
1966 Mar 11, Three men were
convicted of the murder of Malcolm X.
(HN, 3/11/98)
1966 Apr 6, Emmett Ashford
became the first African-American major league umpire. The highly
regarded umpire was known for his dynamic and distinctive style of
calling balls and strikes.
(HN, 4/12/99)(HNQ,
4/15/00)(http://netscape.net/picassoaustin/homepage)
1966 May 13, Federal education
funding was denied to 12 school districts in the South because of
violations of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
(MC, 5/13/02)
1966 May 16, Stokely Carmichael
was named chairman of Student Nonviolent Coordinating.
(MC, 5/16/02)
1966 Jun 6, Stokely Carmichael
launched the "Black Power" movement.
(MC, 6/6/02)
1966 Jul 12, There were race
riots in Chicago.
(MC, 7/12/02)
1966 Jul 19, Gov. James Rhodes
declared a state of emergency in Cleveland due to a race riot.
(MC, 7/19/02)
1966 Aug 5, Martin Luther King
Jr. was stoned during a march in Chicago.
(MC, 8/5/02)
1966 Aug 7, There was a race
riot in Lansing, Michigan.
(MC, 8/7/02)
1966 Aug 27, There was a race
riot in Waukegan, Illinois.
(MC, 8/27/02)
1966 Sep 6, A race riot took
place in the Summerhill neighborhood of Atlanta, Ga., from Sep 6-11.
Blacks rioted after a suspected car thief is shot escaping a white
cop and 138 people were arrested with 35 injured. Student
Non-Violent Coordinating Committee's (SNCC's) Stokely Carmichael is
indicted for inciting a riot, and Julian Bond resigns from SNCC.
(www.theprimeone.com/archives/000113.html)
1966 Oct 15, The Black Panthers
wrote their Ten Point Program at the Office of Economic Development
Corp. in Oakland, Ca. It called for adequate housing, jobs,
education and an end to police brutality. The Black Panther Party
was founded by Merritt College students Huey Newton and Bobby Seale.
In 2006 Flores A. Forbes authored “Will You Die With Me: My Life and
the Black Panther Party.”
(SFC,10/24/97, p.A15)(SFEC, 3/1/98, p.W31)(SSFC,
7/9/06, p.M1)
1966 Nov 8, Republican Edward
Brooke (1919-.2014) of Massachusetts became the first
African-American elected to the Senate by popular vote in 85 years.
(AP, 11/8/97)(HN, 11/6/98)(SSFC, 1/4/15, p.C9)
1966 Jerry Varnado and Jimmy
Garrett organized the first Black Student Union at San Francisco
State Univ.
(SFC, 2/1/10, p.A10)
1967 Jan 10, Edward W. Brooke,
R-Mass., the first black elected to the U.S. Senate by popular vote,
took his seat.
(AP, 1/10/98)
1967 Jan 12, The Louisville,
Ky, draft board refused an exemption for boxer Muhammad Ali.
(MC, 1/12/02)
1967 Feb 6, Muhammad Ali TKO’d
Ernie Terrell in 15 for the heavyweight boxing title.
(MC, 2/6/02)
1967 Feb 28, In Mississippi 19
were indicted in the slayings of three civil rights workers in 1964.
Samuel H. Bowers and 6 others were convicted on federal charges in
1970. Bowers was released in 1976.
(HN, 2/28/98)(SFC, 8/18/98, p.A5)
1967 Mar 6, Muhammad Ali was
ordered by selective service to be inducted.
(MC, 3/6/02)
1967 Apr 11, Harlem, NYC,
voters defied Congress and reelected Adam Clayton Powell Jr.
(1908-1972). In January, 1967, the House Democratic Caucus had
stripped Powell of his committee chairmanship following allegations
that Powell had misappropriated Committee funds for his personal use
and other charges. In June, 1969, the Supreme Court ruled that the
House had acted unconstitutionally when it excluded Powell, a duly
elected member. He returned to the House, but without his seniority.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Clayton_Powell_Jr.)
1967 May 12, H. Rap Brown
(b.1943) replaced Stokely Carmichael (1941-1968) as chairman of
Student Nonviolating Coordinating Committee and announced that the
organization will continue its commitment to black power.
(www.shmoop.com/civil-rights-black-power/timeline.html)
1967 Jun 2, Race riots took
place in the Roxbury section of Boston.
(http://ksgaccman.harvard.edu/hotc/DisplayPlace.asp?id=11607)
1967 Jun 11, There was a race
riot in Tampa Florida and the National Guard was mobilized. Martin
Chambers (19) was suspected of robbing a camera store. Chambers ran
from police near Nebraska and Harrison Streets and was shot in the
back and died. Several days of riots around Central Avenue followed.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tampa_Riots)
1967 Jun 12, The US Supreme
Court, in Loving v. Virginia, struck down state laws prohibiting
interracial marriages. Mildred Loving (1940-2008) and her white
husband, Richard (d.1975), married in 1958, had been arrested in
Virginia within weeks of arriving from Washington DC and convicted
on charges of "cohabiting as man and wife.
(AP, 6/12/97)(SFEC, 8/3/97, p.B1)(AP,
5/5/08)(Econ, 5/17/08, p.105)
1967 Jun 27, There was a race
riot in Buffalo, NY, and 200 were arrested.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffalo_riot_of_1967)
1967 Jun 28, Fourteen people
were shot in race riots in Buffalo, New York.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffalo_riot_of_1967)
1967 Jul 12, Blacks in Newark
rioted. 26 were killed, 1500 injured and over 1000 arrested.
(MC, 7/12/02)
1967 Jul 17, Race riots took
place in Cairo, Illinois.
(MC, 7/17/02)
1967 Jul 19, Race riots took
place in Durham, NC.
(MC, 7/19/02)
1967 Jul 20, Race riots took
place in Memphis, Tenn.
(MC, 7/20/02)
1967 Jul 23-30, Racial riots in
the city of Detroit left 40 dead, 2,000 injured and 5,000 homeless
in the worst riot of the summer. The rioting, looting and burning
was quelled with the arrival of 4,700 paratroops dispatched by
President Lyndon Johnson. Nearly all of America's large cities were
wracked by racial violence during the 1965-'68 period. The event
inspired Rev. William Cunningham (d.1997 at 67) to found Focus:
Hope, a volunteer project that grew to become one of the largest
programs in the country dedicated to feeding and teaching job skills
to the urban poor.
(SFC, 5/29/97, p.C4)(HNQ, 7/11/98)
1967 Jul 24, Race riots took
place in Cambridge, Maryland.
(MC, 7/24/02)
1967 Jul 24, Race riots in
Detroit forced the postponement of a Tigers-Orioles baseball game.
[see Jul 23-30]
(MC, 7/24/02)
1967 Jul 27, In the wake of
urban rioting, President Johnson appointed the Kerner Commission to
assess the causes of the violence. The same day, black militant H.
Rap Brown said violence was "as American as cherry pie."
(AP, 7/27/97)
1967 Jul 30, There was a race
riot in Milwaukee and 4 people were killed.
(MC, 7/30/02)
1967 Aug 30, The U.S. Senate
confirmed the appointment of Thurgood Marshall as the first black
justice on the U.S. Supreme Court.
(AP, 8/30/97)
1967 Nov 7, Carl Stokes
(1927-1996) was elected the first black mayor of a major city --
Cleveland, Ohio. He served two terms as mayor from 1967 to 1971 and
was a leading advocate for increased federal aid to American cities.
After serving as mayor, Stokes became a television commentator and
later a judge in Cleveland.
(AP, 11/7/97)(HNQ, 1/9/03)
1968 Feb 8, At South Carolina
State 3 black students were killed in a confrontation with highway
patrolmen in Orangeburg, during a civil rights protest against a
whites-only bowling alley. Nearly 50 were injured in the Orangeburg
Massacre during confrontations with the National Guard. In 2001 Gov.
Jim Hodges voiced his regret over the massacre.
(SFEC, 2/22/98, BR p.8)(AP, 2/8/99)(SFC, 2/9/01,
p.A3)
1968 Feb 12, "Soul on Ice" by
Eldridge Cleaver (full name: Leroy Eldridge Cleaver), a militant
activist and Black Panther, was first published. Cleaver spent much
of his early life in and out of prison on charges ranging from drug
possession to assault. It was in prison that he began the essays
that would become Soul on Ice. Shortly after being paroled in 1966,
Eldridge Cleaver met Huey Newton and Bobby Seale, the founders of
the Black Panther party. Cleaver quickly became the party’s minister
of information. Faced with further prison time after a shootout with
police in April 1968, Cleaver jumped bail and fled the country,
first to Cuba, then to Algeria. He returned voluntarily in 1975
having broken with the Panthers and disillusioned with communism.
His change in thinking is reflected in his 1978 book Soul on Fire.
He died on May 1, 1998, in Pomona, California.
(AP, 2/12/98)(HNQ, 2/2/01)
1968 Mar 4, Martin Luther King
Jr. announced plans for Poor People's Campaign. In late March and
early April 1968, Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. devoted his
organizing talents to a drive to bring the nation's poor people to
Washington, D.C. for a series of massive nonviolent demonstrations.
King's "Poor People's Campaign" would attempt to unify African
Americans, Latinos, and lower-income whites in pressing the Johnson
Administration and Congress in an election year to enact a $30
billion-a-year domestic "Marshall Plan" to alleviate poverty.
(SC, 3/4/02)(http://hnn.us/articles/49016.html)
1968 Mar 28, In Memphis a riot
erupted during a protest march in support of striking sanitation
workers led by Martin Luther King. One African-American marcher was
killed and King urged calm as National Guard troops are called to
Memphis to restore order. King subsequently departed Memphis, but
vowed to return on April 4 to attend another march.
(SFC, 12/1/97, p.A3)(http://tinyurl.com/atrl3z)
1968 Apr 3, Less than 24 hours
before he was assassinated in Memphis, Tenn., civil rights leader
Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his "mountaintop" speech to a rally
of striking sanitation workers, "It really doesn't matter with me
now, because I've been to the mountain top, and I don't mind."
(AP, 4/3/98)
1968 Apr 4, Civil rights leader
Martin Luther King, 39, was assassinated while standing on the
balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tenn. James Earl Ray
(d.1998) confessed and pleaded guilty in Mar, 1969, but later tried
to recant and said he was a fall guy. In 1993 Lloyd Jowers (d.2000),
a Memphis businessman, said on ABC-TV that he had hired King's
killer as a favor to an underworld figure who was a friend. Jowers
said he received $100,000 from Memphis produce merchant Frank
Liberto to arrange King’s murder. In 1997 Ray identified an arms
smuggler named "Raoul" as the real killer. In 1998 a former FBI
agent produced documents from Ray’s car with the name Raul. In 1999
a civil trial jury in Memphis ruled that the 1968 killing of Rev.
Martin Luther King was a conspiracy. The jury concluded that Lloyd
Jowers, a former café owner, had conspired with elements of the
Memphis Police Dept., the federal government and organized crime to
kill King. In 2000 a Justice Dept. report rejected allegations of
conspiracy. In 2002 Rev. Ronald Denton Wilson (61) said that his
father, Henry Clay Wilson (d.1990), had shot King. In 2003 Stewart
Burns authored "To the Mountaintop: Martin Luther King's Sacred
Mission to Save America."
(SF E&C, 1/15/1995, A-15)(WUD, 1994,
p.1687)(SFC, 12/26/96, p.A3)(AP, 4/4/97)(SFC, 4/7/97, p.A10)(SFC,
3/25/98, p.A3)(SFC, 4/24/98, p.A1)(SFEC, 11/21/99, p.A12)(SFC,
11/23/99, p.A9)(SFC, 12/9/99, p.A1)(SFC, 12/10/99, p.A15)(SFC,
5/24/00, p.C5)(SFC, 6/10/00, p.A3)(SFC, 4/4/02, p.A2)(SSFC, 1/11/04,
p.M1)
1968 Apr 4, Bobby Kennedy spoke
at a black ghetto in Indianapolis just after hearing of the
assassination of Martin Luther King. His speech registered the
enormity of the event and began the work of healing. Riots over the
next few days hit 76 American cities, but Indianapolis remained
quiet.
(Econ, 4/22/06, p.79)
1968 Apr 4, Five days of race
riots erupted in Washington, D.C. following assassination of Martin
Luther King, Jr. Civil unrest affected at least 110 U.S. cities;
Washington, along with Chicago and Baltimore, were among the most
affected.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1968_Washington,_D.C._riots)
1968 Apr 6, Black Panther
member Bobby Hutton (17) was killed in a gun battle with police in
West Oakland, Ca., and Eldridge Cleaver was arrested.
(SFC,10/24/97, p.A15)(SFC, 4/25/98, p.A13)
1968 Apr 11, President Johnson
signed into law the Civil Rights Act of 1968, a week after the
assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. This included a Fair Housing
Act and the Indian Civil Rights Act, which limited sentences that
tribes could hand down on any charge to six months. In 1968 Congress
increased the maximum to one year. The Federal National Mortgage
Association (Fannie Mae - FNMA), established by the government in
1938, became a private, shareholder-owned company as part of the
Fair Housing Act.
(http://tinyurl.com/2o3p2q)(AP, 4/11/98)(SFC,
2/20/98, p.A23)(http://tinyurl.com/ldx765)
1968 Apr 29, Dr. Ralph
Abernathy led The Poor People's Campaign in Washington D.C., less
than a month after the assassination of King. It concluded on June
23. The campaign was for reforms in welfare, employment and housing
policies. Abernathy was the successor to Rev. Martin Luther King as
head of the Southern Christian Leadership conference.
(HNQ, 1/19/99)
1968 May 8, William Styron
(1925-2006), a white author, received the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
for “The Confessions of Nat Turner” (1967). The book was based on
the true story of an 1831 slave revolt in Virginia. Some black
intellectuals, including Cornell historian John Henrik Clarke,
published a critical response to the book.
(www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/rfk/sfeature/sf_1968_text_05.html)
1968 May 12, "March of Poor"
under Rev. Abernathy reached Washington, DC.
(MC, 5/12/02)
1968 Jun 17, The US Supreme
Court in Jones v. Mayer banned racial discrimination in the sale and
rental of housing.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jones_v._Mayer)
1968 Jul 27, A 3-day race riot
began in Gary, Indiana.
(www.project1968.com/july-28-august-3-1968.html)
1968 Jul 30, In Gary, Indiana,
policemen took aim at snipers after the third night of racial
unrest. 64 people were taken into custody. Mayor Richard G. Hatcher,
the first Negro mayor in a city with a Negro majority, said that he
now believes that gangs realize they will not be allowed to use
violence to get what they want.
(www.project1968.com/july-28-august-3-1968.html)
1968 Aug 8, In Florida a riot
broke out in several neighborhoods of Miami, Florida, including one
community just 10 miles from the Republican Convention. 3 negroes
were killed by gunfire.
(www.project1968.com/august-4-10-1968.html)
1968 Sep 9, Arthur Ashe
(1943-1993) became the 1st black to win the US Open men’s tennis
singles championship.
(www.answers.com/topic/arthur-ashe)(http://tinyurl.com/d2xhty)
1968 Oct 16, American athletes
Tommie Smith and John Carlos sparked controversy at the Mexico City
Olympics by giving "black power" salutes during a victory ceremony
after they'd won gold and bronze medals in the 200-meter race.
(AP, 10/16/08)
1968 Oct 18, The US Olympic
Committee suspended two black athletes, Tommie Smith and John
Carlos, for giving a black power salute as a protest during a
victory ceremony in Mexico City. Bob Beamon soared 29 feet, 2
inches, to set a world record in the long jump. In 1976 Dick Schaap
authored “The Perfect Jump.”
(AP, 10/18/98)(WSJ, 8/9/08, p.W8)
1968 Nov 5, Shirley Chisholm
(1924-2004) of Brooklyn, New York, became the first black woman
elected to serve in the US House of Representatives.
(HN, 11/5/98)(SFC, 1/3/05, p.A3)
1968 Nov 24, Eldridge Cleaver
fled the US with his wife rather face assault charges from 1958. He
returned to the US in 1975.
(www.pbs.org/hueypnewton/people/people_cleaver.html)
1968 Nov 6, At SF State on the
one year anniversary of the Gator incident, the Black Student Union
issued a list of 10 "nonnegotiable" demands and called for a one day
strike. The strike lasted 167 days.
(SFEC, 3/1/98,
p.W3)(http://userwww.sfsu.edu/~runamuck/PACEPAPER.htm)
1968 Dec 18, Carolyn Olsen was
murdered during a robbery that netted $18 on a Santa Monica tennis
court. Black Panther leader Geronimo Pratt was accused of the murder
though he maintained that he was in Oakland on the night the 27-year
old teacher was shot to death. He was arrested in 1970 and convicted
in 1972 and sentenced to a life term in prison. Julius "Buffo"
Butler, a police informant who spied on the Black Panther Party,
told police that he believed Pratt killed Olsen. In 1997 a judge
ruled to reverse Pratt’s conviction based on the credibility of
Butler. He was released on $25,000 bail on 6/10/97. In 2000 Pratt
was awarded $4.5 million to be paid by Los Angeles and the FBI.
(SFC, 4/18/96, C-1)(SFC, 6/7/97, p.A5)(SFC,
6/11/97, p.C2)(SFC, 7/15/00, p.A3)
1968 William Grier and Price
Cobbs authored "Black Rage," in which they argued that psychological
functioning is the same in all races, but that the experiences of
Black people make them different.
(SFEC, 7/20/97, BR p.3)
1968 The Association of Black
Psychologists was founded.
(WSJ, 7/8/96, p.C1)(Civilization, July-Aug, 1995,
p. 36)
1968 Ruth Whitney (1928-1999),
editor of Glamour Magazine, put a black model on the cover for the
first time in the magazine's history.
(SFC, 6/8/99, p.A22)(http://tinyurl.com/ov9m59)
1969 Jan 2, The play "To be
Young, Gifted & Black," by Lorraine Hansberry (1930-1965)
premiered in NYC.
(www.aetna.com/foundation/aahcalendar/1992gifted.html)
1969 Feb 13, In North Carolina
the Afro-American Society students of Duke Univ. led a black student
takeover of the Allen Building to spark University action on the
concerns of Black students. The takeover brought attention to issues
such as establishment of an Afro-American studies program, a black
cultural center, and increasing the number of black faculty and
students.
(http://library.duke.edu/digitalcollections/rbmscl/uabsa/inv/)
1969 Mar 10, James Earl Ray
pleaded guilty to the murder of Dr. Martin Luther King in Memphis,
Tenn., and was sentenced to 99 years in jail. Ray later repudiated
that plea.
(AP, 3/10/98)(HN, 3/10/98)
1969 Apr 14, In NYC the student
Afro-American Society seized Columbia College.
(http://beatl.barnard.columbia.edu/stand_columbia/Timeline1965-69.html)
1969 Apr 19, In Ithaca N.Y.
some 80 armed, militant black students at Cornell Univ. took over
Willard Straight Hall. They demanded a black studies program and cut
a deal with frightened administrators for total amnesty. In 1999
Donald Alexander Downs described the events in his book: "Cornell
'69."
(WSJ, 5/20/99, p.A18)
1969 May 20, In Connecticut
Warren Kimbro (d.2009 at 74), a member of the Black Panthers,
fatally shot Alex Rackley (19), another member of the Black
Panthers, who was believed to be an FBI informant. The shooting was
ordered by George Sams, a local Black Panther leader. Prosecutors
later alleged that Bobby Seale had ordered the murder.
(AP, 2/11/09)
1969 Sep, Marvel Comics
introduced Falcon, the first African-American superhero, in an issue
of its Captain America comics. In 2014 Sam “The Falcon” Wilson took
over as the new patriotic avenger Captain America.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falcon_(comics))(SFC, 7/18/14, p.D4)
1969 Oct 29, The US Supreme
Court ordered immediate desegregation, superseding the previous
"with all deliberate speed" ruling.
(HN, 10/29/98)
1969 Nov 5, In Chicago Judge
Hoffman ordered that the trial of Bobby Seale be separated from 7
others in the Chicago 8 trial.
(SFEC, 11/7/99, p.A5)
1969 Nov 5, In Chicago Judge
Hoffman ordered that the trial of Bobby Seale be separated from 7
others in the Chicago 8 trial. Seale, the founder of the Black
Panther Party for Self-Defense and one of the Chicago Eight, was
later sentenced to four years in prison on sixteen counts of
contempt of court.
(www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/Chicago7/chronology.html)(SFEC,
11/7/99, p.A5)
1969 Dec 4, In Chicago police
stormed an apartment on the West Side and killed 2 Black Panthers,
Fred Hampton and Mark Clark. Panther defense minister Bobby Rush had
left the site just hours earlier.
(SFC, 12/15/99, p.AA4)
1969 Dec 8, Police made a
surprise attack on Black-Panthers in LA.
(MC, 12/8/01)
1969 Grace Halsell (1923-2000)
authored "Soul Sister: The Journal of a White Woman Who Turned
Herself Black and Went to Live and Work in Harlem and Mississippi."
(SFC, 8/18/00,
p.D8)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grace_Halsell)
1970 Jan 12, In Biafra
(Nigeria) the Ibos surrendered after nearly a million died of
starvation.
(HNQ, 5/9/00)
1970 May 12, In Augusta,
Georgia, an overnight riot left 6 black men dead. Autopsies
confirmed that the six men killed were all shot in the back with
police-issued shotguns.
(www.socyberty.com/History/Augusta-Georgia-Riot-of-1970.237549)
1970 Jul 29, Six days of race
rioting began in Hartford, Ct.
(www.fsmitha.com/time1970.htm)
1970 Aug 19, George Wright and
three other men escaped from the Bayside State Prison farm in
Leesburg, New Jersey. He became affiliated with an underground
militant group, the Black Liberation Army, and lived for a while in
a "communal family" with several of its members in Detroit.
(AP, 9/28/11)
1970 Essence Magazine, marketed
to African Americans, was founded.
(WSJ, 6/9/99, p.B10)
1970 Cheryl Brown, Miss Iowa,
became the first African-American finalist in the Miss America
beauty pageant.
(www.imdb.com/name/nm1772163/)
1970 Algeria's Socialist
government permitted American writer and activist Eldridge Cleaver
to open a local office of the Black Panther Movement.
(AP, 9/28/11)
1971 Jan 5, Sonny Liston
(b.1932), World Champion boxer (1962-64), was found dead in his Las
Vegas home.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonny_Liston)
1971 Feb 6, In Wilmington, NC,
Mike's Grocery, a white-owned business, was firebombed. When
firefighters arrived to put out the flames, they were fired upon by
snipers positioned on the roof of Gregory Congregational Church. The
National Guard was mobilized to quell rioting. The violence resulted
in two deaths. Reverend Benjamin Chavis, Jr. of Oxford, North
Carolina, and nine others, eight African American men and one white
woman, were arrested and tried and convicted for arson and
conspiracy in connection with the firebombing. They were sentenced
to nearly 28 years in prison. Chavis Muhammad (b.1948), a member of
the Wilmington 10, was sentenced in 1972 to 34 years in prison. He
spent 4 years in prison before his conviction was overturned on
appeal. In 1980 a federal appeals court threw out the convictions.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilmington_Ten)(SFC, 2/25/97,
p.A10)(SFC, 1/1/13,
p.A4)(www.notablebiographies.com/Ch-Co/Chavis-Muhammad-Benjamin.html)
1971 Feb 11, Whitney Young Jr.
(b.1921), National Urban League director, drowned in Nigeria.
(www.answers.com/topic/whitney-moore-jr-young)
1971 Apr 20, The US Supreme
Court, in Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education, upheld
the use of busing to achieve racial desegregation in schools. The
ruling allowed Charlotte, NC., and other cities nationwide to use
mandatory busing and student assignment based on race to attempt to
further integrate schools. The case arose in 1965 when a black
parent, James E. Swann, challenged the system that kept Charlotte's
black students apart from the white majority. In 2001 an appeals
court ruled that the dual school system was dismantled and busing
could end. A failed appeal to the Supreme Court ended the case in
2002.
(http://tinyurl.com/6lntd5)(SFEC, 7/13/97,
p.D1)(AP, 4/20/07)(SFC, 4/16/02, p.A3)
1971 May 5, There was a race
riot in Brownsville section of Brooklyn, NYC.
(MC, 5/5/02)
1971 May 18, President Nixon
rejected the 60 demands of Congressional Black Caucus.
(www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=3013)
1971 May 25, Jo Etha Collier
(18), a black woman, was killed by 3 drunken white males in Drew,
Miss.
(www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GSvcid=54001&GRid=26897581&)
1971 Aug 29, In SF 2 men burst
into the Ingleside Police Station and fired through a hole in a
bullet-proof glass window killing Sgt. John Young (45). A civilian
clerk was wounded. Black Panthers were suspected. 3 men were charged
in 1975 but charges were dismissed in 1976. In 2005 a SF judge
jailed 4 men for contempt after refusing to answer questions from a
grand jury. In 2007 police charged 9 former members of the Black
Liberation Army with waging a campaign of “chaos and terror” that
left at least 3 officers dead from 1968-1973. 8 of the men were
charged with murder in the Ingleside slaying.
(SFC, 9/1/05, p.B1)(SFC, 10/8/05, p.B2)(SFC,
1/26/07, p.A1)
1971 Oct 2, “Soul Train,” an
American musical variety TV program premiered and continued to 2006.
It was created by Don Cornelius, who also served as its first
host and executive producer.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soul_Train)(SSFC,
5/18/14, Par p.2)
1971 Oct 16, H. Rap Brown
(b.1943) was captured following a shootout with police in NYC. He
was charged with inciting a riot and carrying a gun across state
lines. Brown converted to Islam in jail and became Jamil Abdullah
Al-Amin.
(SSFC, 1/6/02,
p.A13)(http://americanascherrypie.tripod.com/id3.html)
1971 Dec 18, Reverend Jesse
Jackson announced in Chicago the founding of Operation PUSH (People
United to Save Humanity).
(AP, 12/18/99)
1971 Robin Winks authored “The
Blacks in Canada.”
(SFC, 2/12/10, p.A18)
1971 H. Rap Brown was captured
following a shootout with police in NYC. He was charged with
inciting a riot and carrying a gun across state lines. Brown
converted to Islam in jail and became Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin.
(SSFC, 1/6/02, p.A13)
1971 A 29-year litigation began
over a federal and state suit to de-segregate Mississippi's public
universities. In 2004 a federal appeals court upheld a settlement to
allocate $503 million over 17 years toward balanced
integration. Continued litigation was denied.
(SFC, 1/28/04, p.A3)
1971 Rev. Leon Sullivan, a
noted Philadelphia minister, became GM’s 1st black board member. In
1998 Sullivan authored “Moving Mountains.”
(SFC, 6/8/04, B7)
1972 Jan 25, Shirley Chisholm,
the first African American woman elected to U.S. Congress, announced
her candidacy for president as Democrat.
(HN, 1/25/01)
1972 Jan 27, Mahalia Jackson
(b.1911), Grammy Award winning gospel singer, died.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahalia_Jackson)
1972 Feb 23, Black activist
Angela Davis was released from jail where she was held for
kidnapping , conspiracy and murder.
(HN, 2/23/99)
1972 Mar 1, Wilt Chamberlain
became the 1st NBA player to score 30,000 points.
(SC, 3/1/02)
1972 Mar 17, Nixon asked
Congress to halt busing in order to achieve desegregation.
(HN, 3/17/98)
1972 Apr 4, Adam Clayton Powell
Jr. (b.1908), American politician, died in Florida. He was elected
to the US House of Representatives from Harlem in 1945 and became
chair of the Education and Labor Committee in 1961. He was the first
black Congressman from New York.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Clayton_Powell_Jr.)
1972 Jul 25, US health
officials conceded that blacks were used as guinea pigs in the 40
year Tuskegee Syphilis Study in Macon County, Ala. By this time 28
participants had died of syphilis, 100 were dead of related
complications, at least 40 wives had been infected and 19 children
had contracted the disease at birth [see 1932].
(www.npr.org/programs/morning/features/2002/jul/tuskegee/)(SSFC,
1/25/04, p.A27)
1972 Oct 12, On the US aircraft
carrier Kitty Hawk a series of incidents broke out wherein a group
of blacks, armed with chains, wrenches, bars, broomsticks and other
dangerous weapons, went marauding through sections of the ship
disobeying orders to cease, terrorizing the crew, and seeking out
white personnel for senseless beating with fists and with weapons
which resulted in extremely serious injury to three men and the
medical treatment of many more, including some blacks.
(www.history.navy.mil/library/special/racial_incidents.htm)
1972 Oct 24, Jackie Robinson,
1st black baseball player (Brooklyn Dodgers), died at 53 of
complications from diabetes. In 1983 Prof. Jules Tygiel (1949-2007)
authored "Baseball’s Great Experiment: Jackie Robinson and His
Legacy." In 1997 Arnold Rampersad published the biography "Jackie
Robinson."
(WSJ, 10/17/97, p.A20)(SFEC, 4/2/00, BR p.1)(SFC,
7/3/08, p.B5)
1972 Alfred McKenzie (d.1998 at
80), a former Tuskegee Airman and current pressman for the
Washington DC Government Printing Office, filed suit contending that
he and fellow black employees had long been passed over for
promotions that went to whites. After many appeals the suit was won
and in 1987 the office agreed to pay $2.4 million in back wages to
several hundred employees.
(SFC, 4/11/98,
p.A15)(www.arlingtoncemetery.net/mckenzie.htm)
1973 Feb 27, U.S. Supreme Court
ruled that a Virginia pool club could not bar residents because of
color.
(HN, 2/27/98)
1973 May 29, Tom Bradley was
elected the first black mayor of Los Angeles, defeating incumbent
Sam Yorty.
(AP, 5/29/97)
1973 Oct 16, Maynard Jackson
(1938-2003) was the elected 1st black mayor of Atlanta.
(www.blackpast.org/?q=aah/jackson-jr-maynard-1938-2003)
1973 Nov 6, Coleman Young
(1918-1997) was elected the first African American mayor of Detroit,
Mich. He served 5 consecutive terms and chose not to seek
re-election in 1993. During WW II he served with the Tuskegee Airmen
and after the war founded the National Negro Labor Council. One of
his major accomplishments was the integration of the Detroit police
force.
(SFEC,11/30/97,
p.C10)(http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1355/is_23_98/ai_67185237)
1973 Richard and Christina
Milner authored “Black Players: The Secret World of Black Pimps.”
The book was the product of an anthropological study regarding both
the lifestyles and subculture of San Francisco Bay Area pimps and
their prostitutes.
(www.amazon.com/Black-players-Secret-World-pimps/dp/0316574112)
1973 In South Africa Eugene
Terre’Blanche (1941-2010) founded the Afrikaner Resistance Movement,
with an ideology that blacks were not only inferior but also a
mortal threat to the Afrikaner volk.
(Econ, 4/10/10, p.88)
1974 Jun 30, Alberta King
(b.1903), mother of Martin Luther King Jr., was assassinated in
Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Georgia by Marcus Chenault, a
twenty-one year old from Ohio who claimed that "all Christians are
my enemies."
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alberta_Williams_King)
1974 Sep 12, The start of
court-ordered busing to achieve racial integration in Boston's
public schools was marred by violence in South Boston.
(AP, 9/12/99)
1974 Nov 5, Walter Washington
(1915-2003) was elected mayor of Washington DC, the 1st black mayor
there in 104 years. He had been appointed mayor-commissioner in
1967.
(WSJ, 10/28/03,
p.A1)(www.narpac.org/ITXDCHIS.HTM)
1975 Feb 25, Elijah Muhammad
(b.1897 as Elijah Poole), US leader of the Detroit-based Nation of
Islam and Black Muslims, died in Chicago.
(USAT, 2/13/97, p.6D)(SFC, 2/28/00,
p.A3)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elijah_Muhammad)
1975 Sep 2, Joseph W. Hatcher
of Tallahassee, Florida, became the state's first African-American
supreme court justice since Reconstruction.
(HN, 9/2/98)
1975 Nov 18, Black Panther
leader Eldridge Cleaver (1935-1998) returned to US to face assault
charges from 1958.
(www.pbs.org/hueypnewton/people/people_cleaver.html)
1976 Jan 23, Paul Robeson
(b.1898), black athlete, lawyer, singer, died in Philadelphia. Lloyd
L. Brown later wrote the biography "The Young Paul Robeson: On My
Journey Now." His granddaughter Susan Robeson in 1981 wrote "The
Whole World in His Hands: A Pictorial Biography of Paul Robeson."
(SFC, 3/26/98, p.A26)(WSJ, 4/9/98,
p.A21)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Robeson)
1976 Jun 16, White police
gunned down black schoolchildren and caused a nationwide riot that
left 700 people dead. Students at Morris Isacson High School in
Soweto had marched to protest a new rule that called for Afrikaans
as the medium of instruction.
(SFC, 6/15/96, p.C12)
1976 The children’s fiction
"Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry" by Mildred Taylor (b.1943) was
published.
(SFEC, 2/27/00, BR
p.12)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mildred_Taylor)
1976 Britain adopted sweeping
anti-racial laws, but the laws did not extend to Northern Ireland.
(SFC, 6/30/96, A11)
1976 The British Commission for
Racial Equality was formed.
(Econ, 5/15/04, p.57)
1977 Mar 14, Fannie Lou Hamer
(b.1917), Mississippi civil rights champion, died. She had helped
register black voters when doing so put her own life in danger. She
was instrumental in organizing Mississippi Freedom Summer for the
Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), and later became
the Vice-Chair of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party.
(SFC, 10/6/12, p.A5)(
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fannie_Lou_Hamer)
1977 Apr 27, Bloody riots took
place in Soweto, South Africa.
(MC, 4/27/02)
1977 Jul 28, Roy Wilkins turned
over leadership of the National Association for the Advancement of
Colored People (NAACP) to Benjamin L. Hooks (d.2010 at 85). Hoods
continued as executive director to 1992. He was awarded the
Presidential Medal of Honor in 2007.
(AP, 7/28/00)(SFC, 4/16/10, p.C8)
1977 Aug 31, Ian Smith,
espousing racial segregation, won the Rhodesian general election
with 80% of overwhelmingly white electorate's vote.
(MC, 8/31/01)
1977 Dec 4, Jean-Bedel Bokassa,
ruler of the Central African Empire [later Central African
Republic], crowned himself emperor in a ceremony believed to have
cost more than $100 million. Bokassa was deposed in 1979; he died in
November 1996 at age 75.
(AP, 12/4/97)
1977 Lawrence Levine
(1933-2006), professor of history at UC Berkeley, authored “Black
Culture and Black Consciousness: African American Folk Thought from
Slavery to Freedom.”
(SFC, 10/28/06, p.B6)
1978 Jan 16, NASA named 35
candidates to fly on the space shuttle, including Sally K. Ride, who
became America's first woman in space, and Guion S. Bluford Jr., who
became America's first black astronaut in space. Six women, out of
some 3,000 original applicants, graduated from NASA's rigorous
training program to become the 1st female astronauts in the space
program.
(AP,
1/16/98)(www.astronautix.com/astrogrp/nas81978.htm)
1978 Feb 1, Harriet Tubman
became the 1st black woman honored on a US postage stamp.
(http://chi.gospelcom.net/DAILYF/2002/02/daily-02-01-2002.shtml)
1978 May 1,
Ernest Morial was inaugurated as the first black mayor of New
Orleans.
(AP, 5/1/97)
1978 May 25, Most of SF's
18,000 black students, 28% of the public school enrollment, stayed
away from classes in honor of a one-day boycott called by Pastor
Amos Brown.
(SFC, 5/23/03, p.E8)
1978 Jun 23, Joseph Freeman Jr.
became the 1st black priest in Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day
Saints (LDS).
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1990s_(LDS))
1978 Jun 28, The US Supreme
Court ordered the medical school at the University of California at
Davis to admit Allan Bakke, a white man who argued he had been a
victim of reverse racial discrimination. The US court’s Bakke
decision allowed universities to consider race in their decisions
only if other factors were equal. This was raised as an issue of
reverse discrimination. Justice Lewis Powell broke a 4-4 tie with
the formulation that Davis’ program was unconstitutional, but that
colleges and universities could still use race as one of several
factors to create a diverse student body.
(WSJ, 7/18/96, p.A10)(AP, 6/28/97)(SFC, 6/27/98,
p.A16)
1978 Sep 30, Huey Newton
(1942-1989) was convicted in Oakland, Ca., on weapons charges and
launched into a 40 minute harangue calling SF Superior Court Judge
Joseph Koresh (1909-1996) "a renegade Jew."
(SFC, 6/21/96,
p.E2)(www.lib.berkeley.edu/MRC/pacificapanthers.html)
1978 Dec 3, William Grant Still
(b.1895), the first important black symphonic composer, died.
(WSJ, 12/9/98,
p.A20)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Grant_Still)
1978 Stokely Carmichael
(1941-1998), American civil rights and black power advocate, changed
his name to Kwame Ture in honor of Kwame Nkrumah and Ahmed Sekou
Toure, 2 African socialist leaders in Guinea.
(SFC, 11/16/98, p.A7)
1979 Jan 17, Gov. Brown
named former Congresswoman Yvonne Brathwaite Burke to the
California Board of Regents. She was the 1st black person ever
appointed to the board.
(SFC, 1/16/04, p.E5)
1979 Feb 18, The miniseries
"Roots: Next Generations" premiered on ABC TV.
(www.imdb.com/title/tt0078678/)
1979 May 16, Asa Philip
Randolph (b.1889), black labor leader and civil rights pioneer, died
in NYC. Randolph brought the word of trade unionism to millions of
African American households.
(www.aflcio.org/aboutus/history/history/randolph.cfm)
1979 Nov 3, Five radicals were
killed when gunfire erupted during an anti-Ku Klux Klan
demonstration in Greensboro, N.C., after a caravan of Klansmen and
Nazis had driven into the area. Named 'The Greensboro Massacre', the
five marchers were shot to death in broad daylight and another 8
were wounded.
(AP, 11/3/97)(MC, 11/3/01)
1979 Dec 17, In a case that
aggravated racial tensions, Arthur McDuffie, a black insurance
executive, was fatally beaten after a police chase in Miami. Four
white police officers were later acquitted of charges stemming from
McDuffie's death.
(AP, 12/17/99)
1980 Feb, Mohammed Ali (b.1942)
toured Africa as Pres. Carter's envoy.
(www.assatashakur.org/forum/showthread.php?t=3822)
1980 Mar 28, Jesse Owens
(b.1913), (Oly-gold-36), died.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Owens)
1980 Apr 16, Arthur Ashe
(1943-1993) retired from professional tennis following quadruple
bypass surgery. He contracted the HIV virus from a blood transfusion
after a second bypass operation in 1983.
(http://tinyurl.com/362hrn)
1980 May 17, Rioting that
claimed 18 lives erupted in Miami's Liberty City neighborhood after
an all-white jury in Tampa acquitted four former Miami police
officers of fatally beating black insurance executive Arthur
McDuffie.
(AP, 5/17/97)
1980 May 29, There was an
attempted assassination of Vernon Jordan Jr, National Urban League
president.
(SC, 5/29/02)
1980 Jun 16, Huey P. Newton
(1942-1989), co-founder of the Black Panther Party, received his
doctoral degree from UC Santa Cruz. His doctoral thesis was titled
“War Against the Panthers: A Study of Repression in America.”
(SFC, 6/10/05, p.F2)
1980 Oct 10, The Martin Luther
King, Jr. Historic Site, a 23 acre area in Atlanta, Ga., listed as a
National Historic Landmark on May 5, 1977, was made a National
Historic Site by the US Department of the Interior. The area where
Dr. King was entombed is located on Freedom Plaza and surrounded by
the Freedom Hall Complex of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Center for
Nonviolent Social Change, Inc.
(www.lib.lsu.edu/hum/mlk/srs218.html)
1980 Nov 17, WHHM Television in
Washington, D.C. became the first African American
public-broadcasting television station.
(HN, 11/17/98)
1980 Dec 1, The US Justice Dept
sued Yonkers, NY, citing racial discrimination.
(http://tinyurl.com/2m6tyl)
1981 Mar 4, A jury in Salt Lake
City convicted Joseph Paul Franklin, an avowed racist, of violating
the civil rights of two black men who were shot to death.
(AP, 3/4/01)
1981 Mar 13, Pres. Reagan
granted Atlanta $1.5 million to search for the murderer of some 20
black children.
(http://tinyurl.com/3ytusv)
1981 Mar 20, Michael Donald
(b.1962), a black teenager in Mobile, Alabama, was abducted,
tortured and killed in what prosecutors charged was a Ku Klux Klan
plot. Henry Hays (d.1997) murdered Michael Donald in a random
abduction. Donald was beaten, cut, strangled and his body was strung
up a tree. Hays was convicted and sentenced to death. He was
executed Jun 6, 1997. In 1987 A wrongful death suit filed by
Donald’s mother, Beulah Mae Donald, gave a $7 million verdict
against the United Klans of America, led by Robert Shelton (d.2003
at 73).
(SFC, 6/6/97,
p.A3)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Donald)(SFC, 1/21/02,
p.A21)
1981 Jun 27, The African States
members of the Organization of African Unity, meeting in Liberia,
adopted a Charter on Human and People’s Rights. Article 5
specifically prohibited slavery. It became effective as of October
21, 1986.
http://www1.umn.edu/humanrts/instree/z1afchar.htm)
1981 Aug 10, Coca-Cola Bottling
Co agreed to pump $34 million into black businesses.
(http://openweb.tvnews.vanderbilt.edu/1981-8/1981-08-10-CBS-13.html)
1981 Aug 26, Roger Nash Baldwin
(97), founder (ACLU), died.
(MC, 8/26/02)
1981 Sep 3, California Gov.
Jerry Brown signed a law making Martin Luther King’s birthday a
state holiday. The legislation was the result of 4 years of efforts
by students at Oakland Tech High School.
(SFC, 7/16/08, p.E1)(http://tinyurl.com/5lc58v)
1981 Sep 8, Civil rights
activist Roy Wilkins (80), former head of the NAACP, died in NYC.
(AP, 9/8/01)
1982 Feb 6, Civil rights
workers began a march from Carrolton to Montgomery, Alabama.
(HN, 2/6/99)
1982 Jun 30, Federal Equal
Rights Amendment failed with 3 states short of ratification.
(www.now.org/issues/economic/cea/history.html)
1982 Aug 17, A jury in South
Bend, Ind. acquitted self-avowed racist Joseph Paul Franklin, for
the 1980 attempted assassination of Vernon Jordan Jr, National Urban
League president.
(http://tinyurl.com/2nzrco)
1982 Nov 20, South Africa
backed down on a plan to install black rule in neighboring Namibia.
(HN, 11/20/98)
1982 Dec 28, Nevell Johnson
Jr., a black man, was mortally wounded by a police officer in a
Miami video arcade, setting off 3 days of race-related disturbances
that left another man dead.
(AP, 12/28/97)
1983 Feb 26, Michael Jackson's
"Thriller" album went to #1 and stayed #1 for 37 weeks.
(SC, 2/26/02)
1983 Apr 29, Harold Washington
was sworn in as the first black mayor of Chicago.
(AP, 4/29/98)(HN, 4/29/98)
1983 May 24, The US Supreme
Court ruled, in Bob Jones University v. United States, that the
government can deny tax breaks to schools that racially discriminate
against students. This upheld a 1970 ruling.
(http://supreme.justia.com/us/461/574/)
1983 Aug 30, Lieutenant Colonel
Guion S. Bluford Jr. became the first black American astronaut to
travel in space, blasting off aboard the Challenger.
(AP, 8/30/97)(HN, 8/30/98)
1983 Sep 15, New York City Cops
beat to death Michael Stewart for graffiting the subway.
(http://shs.westport.k12.ct.us/jwb/Collab/CivRts/StewartRslt.htm)
1983 Oct 19, The US
Senate established the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. federal holiday as
the 3rd Monday in January each year. Dr. King was born on January
15, 1929.
(www.infoplease.com/spot/mlkhistory1.html)
1984 Feb 26, Reverend Jesse
Jackson acknowledged that he had called NYC: "Hymietown."
(SC, 2/26/02)
1984 Mar 15, The acquittal of a
Miami police officer on charges of negligently killing a ghetto
youth sparked a rampage by angry blacks in Miami; 550 people were
arrested.
(http://tinyurl.com/39ow9d)
1984 Mar, William Potts, on a
Miami-bound Piedmont Airlines flight that originated in Newark,
N.J., pushed his call button and gave the flight attendant a note
saying he had two accomplices aboard with explosives. He hijacked
the plane to Cuba, where he was arrested and served 13½ years in
prison. In 2013 he returned to the US to face piracy charges.
(http://tinyurl.com/oayj9do)(Reuters, 11/6/13)
1984 Wallace Terry (d.2003 at
65), journalist, authored "Bloods: An Oral History of the Vietnam
War by Black Veterans. It detailed the experiences of 20 black
soldiers and was made into a 1986 PBS documentary.
(SFC, 6/2/03, p.B4)
1985 May 13, Police in
Philadelphia dropped a bomb on the headquarters of the radical group
MOVE. A fire resulted that killed 11 people, 5 of them children.
Ramona Africa and her 13 year old son were the only two people to
escape the inferno at 6221 Osage St. Africa was charged with rioting
and conspiracy, was convicted and served 7 years in state prison. No
charges have ever been filed against any city officials or employee.
The lawsuit was re-opened in 1996. On Jun 24, 1996, a jury in
Philadelphia awarded $1.5 mil to the survivors of the MOVE cult. In
2013 the documentary “Let the Fire Burn,” directed by Jason Osder,
covered the MOVE story with archival footage.
(SFC, 4/3/96, p.A-4)(USAT, 6/25/96, p.3A)(AP,
5/13/97)(SFC, 11/1/13, p.E7)
1985 Mar 31, In San Diego 2
white police officers stopped a pickup truck driven by Sagon Penn
(d.2002). A scuffle ensued and Penn killed officer Thomas Riggs with
the officer’s gun. Penn was acquitted under allegations of police
brutality and racism.
(SFC, 7/5/02, p.A24)
1985 Nov 19, Stepin Fetchit
(83), born as Lincoln Perry, 1st black film star, died of pneumonia.
His films included “Miracle in Harlem” (1948). In 2005 Mel Watkins
authored “Stepin Fetchit: The Life and Times of Lincoln Perry.”
(www.nndb.com/people/913/000091640/)
1985 Nov 21, Yonkers, NY, was
found guilty of intentional discrimination in its housing and
schools.
(http://tinyurl.com/2oegnj)
1985 Dr. William F. Gibson
(d.2002) was elected head of the NAACP. He had led the South
Carolina chapter for 18 years. His tenure ended in 1995 under
accusations of abusing his expense account.
(SFC, 5/4/02, p.A21)
1986 Jan 20, The United States
observed the first federal holiday in honor of slain civil rights
leader Martin Luther King Jr.
(AP, 1/20/98)
1986 Feb 4, The U.S. Post
Office issued a commemorative stamp featuring Sojourner Truth.
(HN, 2/4/99)
1986 Jul 2, The US Supreme
Court upheld affirmative action in 2 rulings.
(SC, 7/2/02)
1986 Sep 8, Oprah Winfrey began
her syndicated TV talk show.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Oprah_Winfrey_Show)(SSFC, 2/11/01,
BR p.1)
1986 Naomi Sims (1948-2009)
authored “All About Health and Beauty for the Black Woman.” Her 1968
cover shot on the Ladies’ Home Journal was a breakthrough for black
fashion models.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naomi_Sims)(SFC,
8/7/09, p.D5)
1987 Jan 24, About 20,000 civil
rights demonstrators marched through predominantly white Forsyth
County, Ga., a week after a smaller march was disrupted by Ku Klux
Klan members and supporters.
(AP, 1/24/98)
1987 Feb 12, Surviving
relatives of a black man murdered by KKK members were awarded $7 M
damages.
(MC, 2/12/02)
1987 Feb 25, US Supreme Court
upheld affirmative action with a 5-4 vote.
(MC, 2/25/02)
1987 Feb 26, NBA's Michael
Jordan's scored 58 points for a Chicago Bull record.
(SC, 2/26/02)
1987 Aug 24, Bayard Rustin
(b.1912), gay civil rights activist, died of cardiac arrest. In 2003
a documentary of his life by Nancy Kates: "Brother Outsider: The
Life of Bayard Rustin," was aired on PBS TV. He was the chief
architect of the 1963 march on Washington. In 2003 John D'Emilio
authored "Lost Prophet: The Life and Times of Bayard Rustin."
(SFC, 1/16/03, p.E1)(SSFC, 8/31/03, p.M3)
1987 Nov 25, Harold Washington,
the first black mayor of Chicago (1983-1987), died at age 65 after
suffering a heart attack in his City Hall office.
(AP, 11/25/97)
1987 Nov 30, Author James
Baldwin died in St. Paul de Vence, France, at age 63. His work
included "Notes of a Native Son," "Nobody Knows My Name," and "The
Fire Next Time." In 1991 James Campbell published the biography:
"Talking at the Gates: A Life of James Baldwin."
(AP, 11/30/97)(SFC, 12/30/98, p.A2)
1987 Dec 8, Kurt Schmoke became
the first African-American mayor of Maryland when he was elected the
mayor of Baltimore. He was a Rhodes scholar and Harvard Law School
graduate. He served 3 terms and decided to run for the Senate.
(SFC, 12/4/98, p.A12)(HN, 12/8/98)
1987 First Friday, an African
American networking organization, began in New Jersey as a happy
hour for people in their 30s.
(SSFC, 8/18/02, p.E1)
1988 Jan 16, Jimmy "The Greek"
Snyder was fired as a CBS Sports commentator one day after telling a
TV station in Washington, D.C., that, during the era of slavery,
blacks had been bred to produce stronger offspring. He was fired
because he claimed blacks were superior to whites in athletics, and
he traced it back to how blacks were bred. To make matters worse, he
also said "if blacks take over coaching like everybody wants them
to, there is not going to be anything left for the white people."
(AP,
1/16/98)(http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/almanac/video/1988/)
1988 Mar 12, Rev. Jesse Jackson
won the Democratic precinct caucuses in his native South Carolina.
(AP, 3/12/98)
1988 Apr 6, Black pole explorer
M. Henson was buried next to R. Peary in Arlington.
(MC, 4/6/02)
1988 May 5, The Rev. Eugene
Antonio Marino became the nation's first black Roman Catholic
archbishop during an installation Mass in the Atlanta Civic Center.
He stepped down in July 1990 because of a two-year affair with
Columbus resident Vicki Long.
(AP, 5/5/98)
1988 Jun 5, Clarence Pendleton
(57), chairman of the US Civil Rights Commission, died.
(AP, 6/5/98)
1988 Aug 27, Tens of thousands
of civil rights marchers gathered in Washington, D.C., on the eve of
the 25th anniversary of Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream"
speech.
(AP, 8/27/98)
1988 Aug 31, In South Africa
the Khotso House was bombed. Police chief Johan van der Merwe was
instructed to blow up the Johannesburg headquarters of the South
African Council of Churches, called Khotso House, for harboring
anti-apartheid groups. The bombing injured 21 people. He said in
1996 that the instructions came from Law and Order Minister Adriaan
Vlok, who told him that the order came directly from Pres. P.W.
Botha. In 1997 a document submitted by Vlok said the order to
destroy the headquarters came from Pres. Botha. Col. Eugene de Kock
testified in 1998 that he was called in by a police general to
blowup Khotso House. Vlok testified in 1998 that Botha dictated the
bombing. Vlok and van der Merwe were given amnesty in 1999.
(SFC, 11/23/96, p.A9)(SFC, 6/21/97, p.A10)(SFC,
6/4/98, p.A12)(SFC, 7/22/98, p.A11)(SFC, 8/6/99, p.A14)
1988 Romare Bearden (b.1911),
North Carolina-born African American artist, died. He depicted black
culture and history and transferred his collages to prints using a
variety of techniques. In 2004 Jan Greenberg authored "Romare
Bearden: Collage of Memories."
(WSJ, 11/19/96, p.A20)(SFC, 3/24/04, p.E1)
1989 Feb 5, Kareem Abdul-Jabar
became the 1st NBA player to score 38,000 points.
(MC, 2/5/02)
1989 Feb 10, Ron Brown was
elected chairman of the Democratic National Committee, becoming the
first black to head a major U.S. political party.
(AP, 2/10/99)
1989 Apr 12, Sugar Ray Robinson
(b.1921), former middleweight boxing champion, died in Culver City,
Ca., after suffering from Alzheimer’s disease. In 2009 Wil Haygood
authored “Sweet Thunder: The Life and Times of Sugar Ray Robinson.”
(AP, 4/12/99)(Econ, 10/24/09, p.96)
1989 May 9, VP Quayle said in
United Negro College Fund speech: "What a waste it is to lose one's
mind" instead of "a mind is terrible thing to waste."
(www.realchange.org/quayle.htm)
1989 Jun 14, Congressman
William Gray, an African American, was elected Democratic Whip of
the House of Representatives.
(HN, 6/14/02)
1989 Aug 22, Black Panther
co-founder Huey P. Newton (47) was shot to death in Oakland, Calif.,
by a drug dealer. Gunman Tyrone Robinson (25) was later sentenced to
32 years to life in prison.
(AP, 8/22/97)(SFC,10/24/97, p.A15)
1989 Aug 23, In a case that
inflamed racial tensions in New York City, Yusuf Hawkins, a black
teen-ager, was shot dead after he and his friends were confronted by
white youths in a Brooklyn neighborhood.
(AP, 8/23/99)
1990 Jan 12, Civil Rights
activist Rev. Al Sharpton was stabbed in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn.
(MC, 1/12/02)
1990 Feb 10, South African
President F.W. de Klerk announced that black activist Nelson Mandela
would be released the next day after 27 years in captivity.
(AP, 2/10/00)
1990 Mar 3, Carole Gist (20) of
Michigan was 1st black crowned 39th Miss USA.
(SC, 3/3/02)
1990 Apr 17, The Rev. Ralph D.
Abernathy, the civil rights activist and top aide to Rev. Martin
Luther King Jr., died in Atlanta at age 64.
(AP, 4/17/00)
1990 May 9, NY Newsday reporter
Jimmy Breslin was suspended for a racial slur.
(MC, 5/9/02)
1990 Aug 17, Phyllis Polander
sued Mike Tyson for sexual harassment.
(SC, 8/17/02)
1991 Jan 2, Sharon Pratt Dixon
was sworn in as mayor of Washington, D.C., becoming the first black
woman to head a city of Washington's size and prominence.
(AP, 1/2/98)
1991 Feb 2, In a dramatic
concession to South Africa’s black majority, President F.W. de Klerk
lifted a ban on the African National Congress and promised to free
Nelson Mandela.
(AP, 2/2/01)
1991 Mar 3, In Los Angeles
police arrested ex-convict Rodney King after an 8-mile chase. King
resisted arrest and the police used force to subdue him. A local
resident captured part of the arrest and beating on video tape. The
incident led to a police trial and acquittal that sparked a violent
riot. In 1998 Lou Cannon published "Official Negligence: How Rodney
King and the Riots Changed Los Angeles and the LAPD" documenting the
whole affair.
(WSJ, 2/5/98, p.A20)(SFEC, 2/8/98, BR p.1)(AP,
3/3/98)
1991 Mar 15, An indictment was
unsealed in Los Angeles, charging four police officers with beating
black motorist Rodney King.
(HN, 3/15/98)(AP, 3/15/01)
1991 Jul 20, Mike Tyson was
accused of raping a Miss Black America contestant.
(MC, 7/20/02)
1991 Nicholas Lemann authored
“The Promised Land: The Great Black Migration and How It Changed
America,” and account of the 20th century move north by African
Americans. The book established Lemann as a sought-after commentator
on race relations and other fundamental aspects of American society.
(Econ, 8/28/10,
p.73)(www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/about/people/nlbio.htm)
1992 Jan 27, Boxer Mike Tyson
went on trial for rape. He was found guilty.
(MC, 1/27/02)
1992 Jan 29, Willie Dixon (76),
blues composer (Backdoor Man), died.
(MC, 1/29/02)
1992 Feb 7, Former heavyweight
boxing champion Mike Tyson testified at his rape trial in
Indianapolis that his accuser, a Miss Black America contestant, had
consented to having sex with him.
(AP, 2/7/02)
1992 Feb 9, Magic Johnson
returned to professional basketball by playing in the NBA All-Star
game. Johnson was named most valuable player as his side, the
Western Conference, defeated the Eastern Conference 153-to-113.
(AP, 2/9/02)
1992 Feb 10, Boxer Mike Tyson
was convicted in Indianapolis of raping Desiree Washington, a Miss
Black America contestant.
(AP, 2/10/97)
1992 Feb 10, Alex Haley, author
of "Roots" and co-writer of "The Autobiography of Malcolm X," died
in Seattle at age 70. Much of his work was donated to the Univ. of
Tennessee, Knoxville.
(SFC, 12/6/96, p.C15)(AP, 2/10/97)
1992 Mar 26, A judge in
Indianapolis sentenced former heavyweight boxing champion Mike Tyson
to six years in prison for raping a Miss Black America contestant.
Tyson ended up serving three years.
(AP, 3/26/02)
1992 Apr 29, Deadly rioting
erupted in Los Angeles after a jury in Simi Valley acquitted
four Los Angeles police officers of almost all state charges in the
videotaped beating of Rodney King. White truck driver Reginald Denny
was beaten by a mob in south Central LA angered by the acquittal of
4 police officers caught on video tape in the beating of black
motorist Rodney King. Three days of violence ensued with 55 people
killed, 2,300 injured and an estimated $1 billion [$717 million] in
property damages. Rioters tore through the city following the not
guilty verdicts on state charges for Los Angeles Police Department
Sergeant Stacey C. Koon and officer Laurence M. Powell for beating
Rodney King. 1093 buildings were damaged or destroyed. Of these, 764
retail stores were owned by Koreans. The US Congress later
authorized $1 billion to revitalize south central Los Angeles.
(TMC, 1994, p.1992)(SFC, 6/14/96, p. A4)(SFC,
1/1/97, p.A16)(SFC, 4/29/97, p.A8)(WSJ, 6/4/97, p.CA1)(AP,
4/29/98)(SFC, 2/5/00, p.A3)
1992 May 15, A judge in Los
Angeles ordered police officer Laurence Powell retried on a charge
of excessive force in the beating of Rodney King. The charge was
eventually dropped.
(AP, 5/15/97)
1992 Jul 12, In an emotional
farewell speech, Benjamin Hooks, outgoing executive director of the
NAACP, urged the group's convention in Nashville, Tenn., to show the
world that it remained vital.
(AP, 7/12/97)
1992 Autherine Lucy Foster
(b.1929), wife of Rev. Hugh Foster, finally got a degree from the
Univ. of Alabama, when she received a Master's in Education. She had
been suspended from the school in 1956 due to campus safety issues
relating to her race. Also in that graduating class was her daughter
Grazia, who received a Bachelor's Degree in Corporate Finance.
(NYT, 4/26/1992, p.43)
1993 Feb 6, Tennis
Hall-of-Famer and human rights advocate Arthur Ashe died of AIDS in
New York at age 49. He was the first black man to win the Wimbledon
tennis match.
(SFC, 7/4/96, p.A3)(AP, 2/6/97)
1993 Apr 9, The Rev. Benjamin
Chavis was chosen to head the NAACP, succeeding Benjamin Hooks.
(AP, 4/9/98)
1993 Apr 16, A jury reached
guilty verdict in the Federal case against cop who beat Rodney King,
but the verdict was not read until April 17th.
(MC, 4/16/02)
1993 Apr 17, A federal jury in
Los Angeles convicted two former police officers of violating the
civil rights of beaten motorist Rodney King; two other officers were
acquitted. [see Apr 16]
(AP, 4/17/98)
1993 Jul 4, Pilar Fort was
crowned 25th Miss Black America.
(Maggio, 98)
1993 Jul 15, Authorities in Los
Angeles announced eight arrests in connection with an alleged plot
by white supremacists to ignite a race war by bombing a black church
and killing prominent black Americans. Christopher Fisher, leader of
the Fourth Reich Skinheads, was later sentenced to more than 8 years
in federal prison while defendant Carl Daniel Boese was sentenced to
nearly 5 years in prison; both had pleaded guilty to arson and
conspiracy charges.
(AP, 7/15/03)
1993 Toni Morrison (b.1931,
American novelist, won the Nobel Prize in Literature. Her novels are
known for their epic themes, vivid dialogue, and richly detailed
black characters. Among her best known novels are “The Bluest Eye,”
“Song of Solomon,” and “Beloved,” which won the Pulitzer Prize for
Fiction in 1988.
(AP,
10/8/09)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toni_Morrison)
1994 Apr 16, Ralph Ellison
(b.1914), author of "Invisible Man" (1952), died in New York of
pancreatic cancer at age 80. His unfinished novel "Juneteenth" was
published in 1999. His books also included "Living With Music." In
2002 Lawrence Jackson authored "Ralph Ellison: Emergence of Genius."
(AP, 4/16/99)(WSJ, 6/18/99, p.W13)(WSJ, 6/14/02,
p.W11)
1994 Apr 19, A Los Angeles jury
awarded $3.8 million to beaten motorist Rodney King.
(AP, 4/19/99)
1994 Apr 27, South Africa began
its first democratic elections.
(SFC,10/24/97, p.D6)
1994 May 1, South Africa's
first all-race elections ended.
(SFC, 11/30/96, p.A12)
1994 May 29, Khallid Abdul
Muhammad, a former spokesman for the Nation of Islam, was shot and
wounded after delivering a speech at the University of California,
Riverside; a defrocked Nation of Islam minister, James Edward Bess,
was charged. Bess was later convicted of attempted murder and
assault and sentenced to life in prison.
(AP, 5/29/04)
1994 Jul 20, OJ Simpson offered
a $500,000 reward for evidence of ex-wife's killer.
(MC, 7/20/02)
1994 Aug 20, Benjamin Chavis
Junior was fired as head of the NAACP after a turbulent 16-month
tenure.
(AP, 8/20/99)
1994 Aug 30, Rosa Parks, who
helped touch off the civil rights movement in 1955 by refusing to
give up her bus seat to a white man in Montgomery, Ala., was robbed
and beaten in her Detroit apartment. Joseph Skipper later pleaded
guilty to assault and robbery and was sentenced to prison.
(AP, 8/30/99)
1995 Jan 8, The Inner City
Church in Knoxville, Tenn., burned down. Arson was suspected and
investigations by the FBI and ATF were later begun.
(SFC, 6/11/96, p.A16)
1995 Jan 12, The murder trial
against OJ Simpson, began in LA.
(MC, 1/12/02)
1995 Jan 12, Qubilah Shabazz,
the daughter of Malcolm X, was arrested in Minneapolis on charges
that she had tried to hire a hitman to kill Nation of Islam leader
Louis Farrakhan; the charges were later dropped.
(AP, 1/12/00)
1995 Jan 31, The Mt. Calvary
Baptist Church in Hardeman Co., Tenn., burned down. Arson was
suspected and investigations by the FBI and ATF were later begun.
(SFC, 6/11/96, p.A16)
1995 Feb 18, The National
Association for the Advancement of Colored People replaced veteran
chairman William Gibson with Myrlie Evers-Williams, the widow of
slain civil rights leader Medgar Evers, after the rank-and-file
declared no confidence in Gibson's leadership.
(AP, 2/18/00)
1995 Feb 19, A day after being
named the new chairwoman of the National Association for the
Advancement of Colored People, Myrlie Evers-Williams outlined her
plans for revitalizing the civil rights organization, saying she
intended to take the group back to its roots.
(AP, 2/19/00)
1995 Mar 16, Mississippi
formally abolished slavery and ratified 13th Amendment.
(MC, 3/16/02)
1995 May 1, Charges that
Qubilah Shabazz, the daughter of Malcolm X, had plotted to murder
Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan were dropped as jury
selection for her trial was about to begin in Minneapolis.
(AP, 5/1/00)
1995 May 14, Myrlie
Evers-Williams was sworn in to head the NAACP, pledging to lead the
civil rights group away from its recent troubles and restore it as a
political and social force.
(AP, 5/14/00)
1995 Aug 29, At the O.J.
Simpson murder trial in Los Angeles, without the jury present, tape
recordings of police detective Mark Fuhrman were played in which
Fuhrman could be heard spouting racial invectives.
(AP, 8/29/00)
1995 Aug 31, At the O.J.
Simpson trial in Los Angeles, Judge Lance Ito ruled the defense
could play only two examples of police detective Mark Fuhrman’s
racist comments from taped conversations with a screenwriter.
(AP, 8/31/00)
1995 Oct 9, Nation of Islam
leader Louis Farrakhan and former NAACP exec. Benjamin Chavis
propose to lead a march of black men, "the million man march," on
Washington DC on Oct. 16.
(WSJ, 10/10/95, p.A1)(SFC, 2/25/97, p.A10)
1995 Dec 9, Rep. Kweisi Mfume
(the Swahili name means conquering son of kings), D-Md., was chosen
to head the NAACP.
(WSJ, 12/11/95, p.A-1)(AP, 12/9/97)
1996 Jan 11, The Little Mt.
Zion Baptist Church in Green Co., Ala., burned down. Arson was
suspected and investigations by the FBI and ATF were later begun.
(SFC, 6/11/96, p.A16)
1996 Jan 11, The Mt. Zoar
Baptist Church in Green Co., Ala., burned down. Arson was suspected
and investigations by the FBI and ATF were later begun.
(SFC, 6/11/96, p.A16)
1996 Feb 1, The Cypress Grove
Baptist Church, St. Paul’s Free Baptist Church, and Thomas Chapel
Benevolent Society Church in East Baton Rouge Parish, La., burned
down. Arson was suspected and investigations by the FBI and ATF were
later begun.
(SFC, 6/11/96, p.A16)
1996 Feb 1, The Sweet Home
Baptist Church in Baker, La., burned down. Arson was suspected and
investigations by the FBI and ATF were later begun.
(SFC, 6/11/96, p.A16)
1996 Feb 20, Kweisi Mfume began
his job as President and CEO of the NAACP.
(SFEC, 1/5/97, Z1 p.3)
1996 Mar 5, The St. Paul AME
Church in Hatley, Miss., burned down. Arson was suspected and
investigations by the FBI and ATF were later begun.
(SFC, 6/11/96, p.A16)
1996 Apr 3, Carl Stokes died of
cancer AT 68. He was elected mayor of Cleveland in 1967, the first
black mayor of a major US city. He had been on medical leave from
his post since 1994 as ambassador to the Seychelles.
(WSJ, 4/4/96, A-1)(AP, 4/3/97)
1996 Aug 30, In Libya, Louis
Farrakhan said that he could not accept a $250,000 human rights
award until US courts give him permission.
(SFC, 8/31/96, p.A4)
1996 Sep 12, The first
African-American civil War memorial was dedicated in Washington DC.
(SFC, 9/11/96, p.C1)
1996 Nov 13, A grand jury in
St. Petersburg, Fla., declined to indict a white policeman, Jim
Knight, who had shot black motorist TyRon Lewis to death the
previous month; the decision prompted angry mobs to return to the
streets.
(SFC, 11/14/96, p.A3)(AP, 11/13/97)
1996 Kennell Jackson
(1941-2005), Stanford Univ. history professor, authored “America Is
Me: The Most Asked and Least Understood Questions About Black
American History.”
(SFC, 11/29/05, p.B7)
1997 Jan 28, Five former police
officers in South Africa admitted to killing anti-apartheid activist
Stephen Biko, who died in police custody in 1977. His death had been
officially listed as an accident.
(MC, 1/28/02)
1997 Jan 31, Three days
of deliberations in the O.J. Simpson civil trial in Santa Monica,
Calif., were scrapped after the only black woman on the panel was
replaced because of misconduct. The jury started over.
(AP, 1/31/98)
1997 Feb 10, A civil jury in
Santa Monica heaped $25 million in punitive damages on O.J. Simpson
for the slayings of his ex-wife and her friend, on top of $8.5
million in compensatory damages awarded earlier.
(USAT, 2/11/97, p.A1)(AP, 2/10/97)
1997 Feb 10, The city of
Cincinnati revealed plans for a new $80-million museum for its role
in the Underground Railroad during the Civil War. The museum and
freedom center were scheduled to open in 2002.
(USAT, 2/11/97, p.D1)
1997 Feb 23, Former NAACP
leader Benjamin Chavis announced that he had joined the Nation of
Islam led by ailing Louis Farrakhan.
(SFC, 2/25/97, p.A10)
1997 Feb 23, In Philadelphia a
group of white men attacked a black family in the Grays Ferry
section. Nine men were tried in 1998 and 6 were convicted on a
variety of felony accounts.
(SFC, 2/10/98, p.A3)
1997 Feb 27, A jury in
Fayetteville, N.C., convicted former Army paratrooper James N.
Burmeister of murdering a black couple so he could get a skinhead
tattoo. He was later sentenced to life in prison.
(AP, 2/27/98)
1997 Mar 9, In Los Angeles the
24-year-old black Gangsta rapper The Notorious B.I.G. (Christopher
G. Wallace or aka Biggie Smalls) was shot and killed in a drive-by
shooting. He had been accused of being involved in a 1994 robbery in
which Tupac Shakur was shot and robbed of $40,000.
(SFC, 3/10/97, p.A8) (AP, 3/9/98)
1997 Mar 21, In Chicago 3
white teenagers attacked and severely injured a 13-year-old black
boy. Lenard Clark (13) was left brain damaged. The suspects, Frank
Caruso (18), Victor Jasas (17), and Michael Kwidzinski (19) were
released on bonds of $150,000 with charges of attempted murder,
aggravated battery and a hate crime. Caruso was convicted in 1998
and was sentenced to 8 years in prison. The other 2 pleaded guilty
to reduced charges and were let off with probation and community
service.
(SFC, 3/25/97, p.A7)(SFC, 10/20/98, p.A6)
1997 Apr 12, The new $38.4
million Museum of African American History was scheduled to open in
Detroit at 315 E. Warren Ave. with a 16,000-sq.-foot core exhibit.
The building was paid for by a city-backed bond issue but the
collection was started by Dr. Charles Wright.
(Sky, 4/97, p.28)(SFEC, 2/23/97, p.T7)(WSJ,
9/30/97, p.A20)
1997 Apr 14, Some 500 black
demonstrators marched in the Grays Ferry section of Philadelphia in
response to a Feb 23 beating of Annette Williams, her son and nephew
by a mob of white men. In March two black men shot and killed the
16-year-old son of a white police officer in a drugstore robbery.
(SFC, 4/15/97, p.A3)
1997 Jun 1, Betty Shabazz (61),
the widow of Malcolm X, was severely burned in a fire set by her
grandson (12) in her Yonkers, N.Y., apartment. She died of the burn
wounds on Jun 23.
(SFC, 6/24/97, p.A3)(SFC, 6/26/97, p.A15)(AP,
6/1/98)
1997 Jul 17, Dr. Robert C.
Weaver (b.1907), the first African American to serve on a
president’s cabinet, died in NYC. He was the administrator of the
federal Housing and Home Finance Agency, the predecessor to HUD,
under President John F. Kennedy. He was named national chairman of
the NAACP in 1960 and in 1962 he was awarded the NAACP Spingarn
Medal. Weaver wrote more than 175 articles and four books on housing
and urban issues. [see Jan 18,1966]
(http://search.eb.com/Blackhistory/article.do?nKeyValue=76375)
1997 Nov 19, In Denver Oumar
Dia, a black man, was gunned down at a bus stop, and a nurse,
Jeannie Vanvelkinburgh, who tried to help him, was shot in the back
and left paralyzed. One of 2 suspects was arrested and described
himself as a skinhead and said that he shot Dia because he was
black.
(SFC, 11/29/97, p.A3)
1997 Nov 27, In Denver five
skinheads beat up a 26-year-old black woman who was shopping at a
7-Eleven. All 5 were captured and arraigned in court.
(SFC, 11/29/97, p.A3)
1998 Jan 19, This was the
Martin Luther King Jr. federal holiday. During a ceremony in Atlanta
commemorating the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, Vice President
Gore announced that the Clinton administration would propose
increasing spending on civil rights by $86 million.
(AP, 1/19/98)(AP, 1/19/99)
1998 Feb 21, Julian Bond was
elected chairman of the 64-member board of the NAACP.
(SFEC, 2/22/98, p.A5)
1998 Mar 17, In Mississippi
after a 21-year court fight the state unsealed over 124,000 pages of
secret files of the State Sovereignty Commission that revealed
numerous illegal methods to thwart the civil rights workers of the
‘50s, ‘60s and ‘70s.
(SFC, 3/18/98, p.A1)
1998 Apr 23, Two New Jersey
troopers fired 11 shots into a van carrying African American and
Latino men from the Bronx. They admitted to racial profiling and
pleaded guilty to misdemeanor charges in 2002.
(SFC, 1/15/02, p.A3)
1998 Apr 23, James Earl Ray
died at a Nashville hospital at age 70. He was the ex-convict who
confessed to assassinating the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968
and then insisted he was framed.
(AP, 4/23/99)
1998 May 1, Eldridge Cleaver,
ex-Black Panther who later renounced his past and became a
Republican, died at age 62 in Pomona, Ca. He wrote the book "Soul On
Ice" in 1965 while in Folsom Prison. The book was published in 1968.
He jumped bail after a 1968 shooting and returned to the US in 1975.
(SFC, 5/2/98, p.A1,13)(AP, 5/1/99)
1998 Jul 13, A jury in
Poughkeepsie, N.Y., ruled that the Rev. Al Sharpton and two others
had defamed a former prosecutor by accusing him of raping Tawana
Brawley. Steven Pagones won a $345,000 judgment.
(AP,
7/13/08)(www.cnn.com/US/9807/13/brawley.verdict.02/)
1998 Aug 26, Attorney General
Janet Reno reopened the investigation of the assassination of civil
rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., focusing on two allegations of
a conspiracy beyond James Earl Ray. A Justice Department
investigation later rejected allegations that conspirators had aided
or framed James Earl Ray in King's assassination.
(AP, 8/26/08)
1998 Aug 31, In Gaithersburg,
Md., Boxer Mike Tyson assaulted 2 motorist following a minor
chain-reaction collision. In 1999 he was convicted of assault and
sentenced to one year in jail.
(SFC, 2/6/99, p.A1)
1998 Sep 7, In Atlanta the
4-day Million Youth Movement ended with a march of less than 10,000
black youths.
(SFC, 9/8/98, p.A3)
1998 Nov 25, Flip Wilson (64),
the fist successful black host of a TV variety show, the Flip Wilson
Show from 1970-1974, died in Malibu, Calif.
(SFC, 11/26/98, p.B9)(AP, 11/25/99)
1998 Nov 30, Margaret Walker
Alexander, black author, died at age 83. Her work included the 1942
poem "For My People," and the 1966 novel "Jubilee."
(SFC, 12/1/98, p.B2)
1999 Jan 7, The new Encarta
Africana contained 3,000 scholarly articles on black culture and
history as part of a 2-CD ROM set by Microsoft. It included a
timeline that combines events in Africa and America.
(SFC, 1/7/99, p.A13)
1999 Jan 20, The Malcolm X
postage stamp, the 22nd in the Black heritage series, went on sale.
(SFC, 1/21/99, p.A3)
1999 Feb 4, In NYC plainclothes
police officers fired 41 shots at Amadou Daillo (22), a Bronx street
peddler and immigrant from Guinea, who was unarmed in front of his
Bronx home. Police were searching for a rapist and Daillo was killed
with 19 gunshot wounds. Officers Kenneth Boss, Sean Carroll, Edward
McMellon and Richard Murphy were later indicted for 2nd degree
murder.
(SFC, 2/5/99, p.A3)(SFC, 2/6/99, p.A3)(SFC,
3/26/99, p.A3)
1999 Feb 19, President Clinton
posthumously pardoned Henry O. Flipper, the first black graduate of
West Point, whose military career was tarnished by a racially
motivated discharge.
(AP, 2/19/00)
1999 Feb 23, A jury in Jasper,
Texas convicted white supremacist John William King of murder in the
gruesome dragging death of a black man, James Byrd Jr.; King was
sentenced to death two days later.
(SFC, 2/24/99, p.A1)(AP, 2/23/00)
1999 Feb 25, A jury in Jasper,
Texas, sentenced white supremacist John William King to death for
chaining James Byrd Jr., a black man, to a pickup truck and dragging
him to pieces in 1998.
(SFC, 2/26/99, p.A3)(AP, 2/25/00)
1999 Mar 31, A federal judge
was expected to approve a settlement by black United Parcel Service
(UPS) workers for over $8 million for racial discrimination.
(SFEC, 3/7/99, p.D2)
1999 Mar 31, Four New York City
police officers were charged with murder for killing Amadou Diallo,
an unarmed African immigrant, in a hail of bullets. The officers
were later acquitted.
(AP, 3/31/00)
1999 Jul 14, Race-based school
busing in Boston came to an end after 25 years.
(AP, 7/14/00)
1999 Sep 4, In NYC the 2nd
Million Youth March headed by Khalid Abdul Muhammad was attended by
1-2 thousand people and watched over by 1,400 police officers.
(SFEC, 9/5/99, p.A2)
1999 Nov 23, Defense Secretary
William Cohen called for a military-wide review of conduct after a
Pentagon study said up to 75 percent of blacks and other ethnic
minorities reported experiencing racially offensive behavior.
(AP, 11/23/00)
1999 David Duke published his
book "My Awakening," a plan for revolution to preserve the Aryan way
of life. The book asserted that blacks are inferior to whites and
included a supporting foreword by FSU Prof. Glayde Whitney (d.2002
at 62).
(SFEC, 3/7/99, p.A10)
2000 Feb 4, Singer Doris
Kenner-Jackson of the Shirelles died in Goldsboro, North Carolina,
at age 58.
(AP, 2/4/01)
2000 Feb 27, Minister Louis
Farrakhan of the Nation of Islam ended 2 decades of bitter rivalry
and embraced W. Deen Mohammad, son of the late Elijah Mohammad
(d.1975), onetime leader of the black Muslims.
(SFC, 2/28/00, p.A3)
2000 Mar 4, On the AIDS crises
it was reported that 1 in every 50 black men in the US was HIV
positive. It was also reported that 1 in 300 of all people in the US
were HIV positive.
(SFEC, 3/5/00, Z1 p.1)
2000 Mar 15, In Michigan 4
teens beat to death and robbed Willie Jones (66) as he left the
Michigan Lanes Bowling Alley in Grand Rapids. The teens then stuffed
Jones into their car trunk and drove around town to show him off.
(SFC, 3/20/00, p.A11)
2000 Mar 16, In Georgia a
gunman shot and wounded 2 sheriff's deputies while being served a
warrant in Atlanta at the home of Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin, formerly
known as H. Rap Brown. The gunman was later identified as Brown.
Deputy Ricky Kinchen (35) died the next day. Al-Amin (56) was
arrested in Alabama on Mar 20.
(SFC, 3/17/00, p.A5)(SFC, 3/18/00, p.A3)(SFC,
3/21/00, p.A3)
2000 May 17, Two former Ku Klux
Klansmen were arrested on murder charges in the 1963 church bombing
in Birmingham, Alabama, that killed four black girls. Thomas Blanton
Junior was convicted and sentenced to life in prison this past May
first. Bobby Frank Cherry was indicted last year, but his trial was
delayed after evaluations raised questions about his mental
competency.
(AP, 5/17/01)
2000 Aug 2, In SF a jury
awarded 17 bakery workers of Interstate Brands Corp. $120 million
for racial discrimination.
(SFC, 8/3/00, p.A1)
2000 Dec 3, Gwendolyn Brooks,
African-American poet, died at age 83. Brooks won a 1949 Pulitzer
Prize for her 2nd book of poetry, "Annie Allen." She was the poet
laureate of Illinois since 1968.
(SFC, 12/4/00, p.E3)
2001 Jan 15, President-elect
Bush marked the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday at an elementary
school in Houston, where he promised wary black Americans: "My job
will be to listen not only to the successful, but also to the
suffering."
(AP, 1/15/02)
2001 Apr 7, In Cincinnati
Timothy Thomas (19), an unarmed black man wanted on 14 misdemeanor
warrants, was fatally shot by a white police officer. The shooting
led to city-wide riots. Officer Stephen Roach was later charged with
negligent homicide and obstructing official business.
(SFC, 4/11/01, p.A10)(SFC, 5/8/01, p.A3)(AP,
4/7/02)
2001 Apr 24, The Rev. Leon
Sullivan, a pioneering civil rights crusader credited with helping
end South Africa's system of apartheid, died in Scottsdale, Ariz.,
at age 78.
(AP, 4/24/02)
2001 May 1, Thomas Blanton Jr.
became the second ex-Ku Klux Klansman to be convicted in the 1963
bombing of a church in Birmingham, Ala., that claimed the lives of
four black girls.
(AP, 5/1/02)
2001 Aug, Alan Brian Bond, one
of the 1st African Americans to become established as a money
manager, was indicted for a 2nd time, this time on charges that he
cherry picked over $50 million in unprofitable trades to client
accounts and profitable ones to his own account. In 1999 he was
indicted and charged with taking $6.9 million in a kickback.
(SFC, 5/17/02, p.C1)
2001 Sep 9, The US pulled out
of the World Conference Against Racism objecting to hateful language
in a preliminary declaration.
(SFC, 12/30/01, p.D5)
2001 Dec 27, Thomas Berkley
(86), founder and publisher of the Post Newspaper Group, died in
Oakland.
(SFC, 12/29/01, p.A26)
2001 Ama: A Story of the
Atlantic Slave Trade by Manu Herbstein paperback - 450 pages;
published by [e-reads]; ISBN: 1585869325 companion
web-site:
www.ama.africatoday.com
2002 Feb 19, Virginia Esther
Hamilton, award winning black author, died in Dayton, Ohio, at age
65. Her 35 children’s books "Zeely" (1967) and "M.C. Higgins, the
Great" (1973).
(SFC, 2/25/02, p.B6)
2002 Mar 9, Jamil Abdullah
al-Amin, aka H. Rap Brown (58), was convicted by an Atlanta jury for
the murder of a sheriff’s deputy on Mar 16, 2000. he was sentenced
to life in prison on Mar 13.
(SSFC, 3/10/02, p.A6)(SFC, 3/13/02, p.A4)
2002 Apr 1, Hugh Davis Graham
(d.2002 at 65) author, died. His work included "Collision Course"
(2002) a look at affirmative action and immigration and "The Civil
Rights Era: Origins and Development of National Policy: 1960-1972,"
a work on the legislative history of civil rights.
(WSJ, 3/27/02, p.A16)(SFC, 4/1/02, p.B5)
2002 May 1, California’s Dept.
of Insurance released a list of former slaves and slaveholders.
Records of 613 salves and 433 slaveholders were made public.
(SFC, 5/1/02, p.A1)(SFC, 5/2/02, p.A17)
2002 May 2, Dr. William F.
Gibson (69), former head of the NAACP, died.
(SFC, 5/4/02, p.A21)
2002 May 6, Otis Blackwell
(70), songwriter, died in Nashville. His 1950s songs included "Don’t
Be Cruel," "All Shook Up," "Return to Sender," and "Great Balls of
Fire."
(SFC, 5/10/02, p.A31)
2002 May 22, Bobby Frank Cherry
(71), former Alabama Klansman, was convicted for the Sep 14, 1963,
murder of 4 Black girls at the 16th Street Baptist Church. The jury
sent him to prison for life.
(SFC, 5/23/02, p.A1)
2002 Jun 14, June Jordan (65),
black radical and UC Berkeley poet and professor, died of cancer.
Her work included 28 books of poems, political essays and children’s
fiction. She was one of the most published African American writers
in history.
(SFC, 9/7/02, p.A17)(SFC, 6/15/02, p.A19)
2002 Jul 4, General Benjamin
Oliver Davis, Jr. (b.1912), the first black general in the US Air
Force and commander of the World War II Tuskegee Airmen, died in
Washington. In 1991 he published his autobiography “Benjamin O.
Davis, Jr., American: An Autobiography.”
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_O._Davis,_Jr.)(AP, 7/4/03)
2002 Oct 4, In Barbados
delegations from Russia, Cuba, South Africa, Colombia and France's
overseas territories abandoned an anti-racism conference that voted
to exclude whites saying they'll have no part in discrimination. The
walkout, on the fourth day of the six-day African and African
Descendants World Conference Against Racism, came after a day of
negotiations failed. Some 200 delegates had voted Wednesday for
whites and Asians to leave the deliberations, saying slavery was too
painful a subject to discuss in front of non-Africans.
(AP, 10/5/02)
2002 Dec 5, Trent Lott, Senate
Republican leader from Mississippi, made remarks that supported Sen.
Strom Thurmond’s 1948 segregationist platform. A political furor
soon erupted.
(SFC, 12/13/02, p.A4)
2002 Dec 18, Robert Johnson
became the 1st African American to own a major sports team. The NBA
awarded him rights to the expansion franchise in Charlotte.
(SFC, 12/19/02, p.A2)
2002 Philip Dray authored "At
the Hands of Persons Unknown," a chronicle of race-based lynchings
from the 1830s to the 1960s.
(WSJ, 1/14/02, p.A16)
2002 Randall Kennedy authored
"Nigger: The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word."
(SSFC, 2/3/02, p.M2)
2002 Darryl Pinckney authored
"Out There: Mavericks of Black Literature," a look at the work of
J.S. Rogers, Vincent O. Carter and Caryl Phillips.
(SSFC, 6/16/02, p.M2)
2003 Jan 21, The US Census
Bureau reported that Hispanics had passed Blacks as the biggest US
minority group.
(WSJ, 1/22/03, p.A1)
2003 Jan, Prof. John U. Ogbu
(d.2003) of UC Berkeley, Nigerian-born anthropologist, authored
"Black American Students in an Affluent Suburb: A Study of Academic
Engagement."
(SFC, 8/23/03, p.A21)
2003 Sep 28, Althea Gibson
(76), Wimbledon's 1st black tennis champion (1957), died in New
Jersey.
(WSJ, 9/29/03, p.A1)
2003 Todd Boyd, Univ. S. Cal.
professor, authored "The New H.N.I.C. – The Death of Civil Rights
and the Reign of Hip Hop. HNIC stands for "head niggasa in charge."
(SSFC, 2/2/03, p.M6)
2003 David L. Chappell authored
"A Stone of Hope: Prophetic Religion and the Death of Jim Crow," in
which he reasoned that black religious faith sustained their efforts
to overcome segregation.
(WSJ, 1/14/04, p.D10)
2003 Chicago passed the
Business, Corporate and Slavery Era Insurance Ordnance that required
companies doing business with the city to disclose any ties to
slavery.
(WSJ, 5/10/05, p.A1)
2003 Niger made slavery a crime
with a penalty of up to 30 years in jail, but continued to turn a
blind eye to the practice.
(Econ, 11/1/08, p.57)
2005 Jan 1, Shirley Chisholm
(80), advocate for minority rights, died. She became the first black
woman elected to Congress and later the first black person to seek a
major party's nomination for the US presidency.
(AP, 1/3/05)
2005 Jan 3, Victor Hill, the
newly elected Clayton County Sheriff, fired 27 mostly white officers
from his staff as the Georgia county opened the year with its 1st
black-majority government.
(SFC, 1/10/05, p.A6)
2005 Aug 8, John H. Johnson
(b.1919) founding publisher of Ebony (1945), Jet (1951), and Ebony
Man (1985), died in Chicago.
(HN, 11/1/98)(SFC, 8/8/05, p.B4)(AP, 8/8/06)
2005 Lisa E. Farrington
authored “Creating Their Own Image: The History of African-American
Women Artists.”
(SSFC, 2/27/05, p.B1)
2005 Adam Hochschild authored
“Bury the Chains: Prophets and Rebels in the Fight to Free an
Empire’s Slaves.”
(Econ, 2/5/05, p.76)
2006 Jun 10, James Cameron
(92), who survived an attempted lynching and went on to found
America's Black Holocaust Museum, died in Milwaukee.
(AP, 6/11/07)
2006 Dec 4, In Jena, La., six
black students (the Jena Six) beat a white schoolmate in an
altercation that stemmed from the hanging of nooses in August in a
tree on school grounds under which white students regularly
gathered. The black teenagers were initially charged with attempted
murder, but later dropped to aggravated second-degree battery in 4
cases. In September, 2007, charges against Mychal Bell were moved to
juvenile court following huge civil rights protests. It was later
reported that 7 black students were involved in the Dec 4 beating.
On Dec 3, 2007, Bell pleaded guilty to a juvenile charge of 2nd
degree battery in return for an 18-month sentence. On June 26, 2009,
5 members of the Jena 6 pleaded no contests to misdemeanor simple
battery with no jail time.
(SFC, 9/21/07, p.A3)(SFC, 9/28/07, p.A3)(Econ,
9/29/07, p.33)(SFC, 12/4/07, p.A3)(SFC, 6/27/09, p.A5)
2006 Tavis Smiley authored
“Covenant With Black America,” a call for African Americans to start
addressing real problems.
(SFC, 2/17/07, p.A1)
2007 Jul 9, The NAACP at its
98th annual meeting held a public burial for the N-word (nigger)
racial slur in Detroit. In 1944 the NAACP held a symbolic funeral in
Detroit for Jim Crow.
(SFC, 7/10/07, p.A3)
2007 Jul 18, Sekou Sundiata
(b.1948), black poet and activist born as Robert Franklin Feaster,
died of heart failure in Westchester, NY.
(SFC, 7/28/07, p.B5)
2007 Aug 2, In Oakland, Ca.,
Chauncey Bailey (57), editor of the Oakland Post and former reporter
for the Oakland Tribune, was shot and killed on his way to work by a
masked gunman. In 2009 an indictment accused Yusuf Bey IV (23), the
leader of Your Black Muslim Bakery, of murder for allegedly telling
two of his followers to kill Bailey. In 2009 Devaughndre Broussard
(21) pleaded guilty to 2 counts of voluntary manslaughter as part of
a deal to secure testimony against Yusuf Bey IV and Antoine Mackey,
another bakery figure. In 2012 Thomas Peele authored “Killing the
Messenger: A Story of Radical Faith, Racism’s Backlash, and the
Assassination of a Journalist.”
(SFC, 8/3/07, p.A1)(SFC, 4/30/09, p.A1)(SFC,
5/8/09, p.B1)(SSFC, 2/26/12, p.F1)
2007 Oct 15, Ernest Withers
(b.1922), African American freelance photographer, died. In 2012 the
FBI admitted that had served as an informant, revealing a 14-year
history between the noted civil rights photographer and the agency.
(SFC, 7/5/12,
p.A6)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernest_Withers)
2007 Charleston, South
Carolina, opened a slavery museum.
(Econ, 10/1/11, p.34)
2008 Douglas A. Blackmon
authored “Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black
Americans from the Civil War to World War II.” In 2009 Blackmon, an
editor at the Wall Street Journal, won a Pulitzer Prize for the
book.
(WSJ, 4/21/09, p.B6)
2008 Mary Lefkowitz authored
“History Lesson: A Race Odyssey,” an account of what she experienced
after questioning the veraity of Afrocentrism and the motives of its
advocates.
(WSJ, 4/15/08, p.D9)
2009 Jan 20, In Washington DC
some 2 million people packed the National Mall to celebrate the
inauguration of Barack Obama as America's 44th and first black
president. “The Question we ask today is not whether government is
too big or too small, but whether it works.” Obama's new
administration ordered all federal agencies and departments to stop
any pending regulations until they can be reviewed by incoming
staff, halting last-minute Bush orders.
(AP, 1/20/09)(Reuters, 1/20/09)(SFC, 1/21/09,
p.A8)
2009 Jan 30, The Republican
Party chose former Maryland Lt. Gov. Michael Steele as the first
black national chairman in its history.
(AP, 1/31/09)
2009 Feb 2, Eric Holder won US
Senate confirmation as the nation's first African-American attorney
general, after supporters from both parties touted his dream resume
and easily overcame Republican concerns over his commitment to fight
terrorism and his unwillingness to back the right to keep and bear
arms.
(AP, 2/2/09)
2009 Mar 15, Richard Masato
Aoki (b.1938), former Japanese-American FBI informant and early
member of the Black Panthers (1967), died in Oakland, Ca., from
complications relating to diabetes. He had given the Panthers some
of their first guns.
(SFC, 8/20/12, p.A1)(http://tinyurl.com/9g5u4zn)
2009 Mar 25, John Hope Franklin
(b.1915), revered Duke Univ. historian and scholar of the African
American experience, died in North Carolina. His books included
“From Slavery to Freedom” (1947).
(SFC, 3/26/09, p.B5)
2009 Jul 23, E. Lynn Harris
(b.1955), pioneer of gay black fiction, died while promoting his
latest book in Los Angeles. Long before the secret world of closeted
black gay men came to light in America, Harris introduced a
generation of black women to the phenomenon known as the "down low."
His debut "Invisible Life" (1994) was a coming-of-age story that
dealt with the then-taboo topic.
(AP, 7/24/09)
2009 Jul 24, President Barack
Obama conceded his words, that a white police officer "acted
stupidly" when he arrested a black university scholar in his own
home, were ill-chosen. He invited both men to visit him at the White
House, but stopped short of publicly apologizing for his remark.
Obama said he had personally telephoned the two men, Harvard
professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Cambridge, Mass., police Sgt.
James Crowley, in an effort to end the rancorous back-and-forth over
the issue. The case began on July 20, when word broke that Gates
(58) had been arrested five days earlier at the 2-story home he
rents from Harvard.
(AP, 7/25/09)
2009 Aug 11, North Carolina
Gov. Beverley Purdue signed the Racial Justice Act into law.
(Econ, 4/28/12, p.34)(http://tinyurl.com/yj8xuzw)
2009 Nov 28, The government of
Peru apologized to its Afro-Peruvian population for the first time
for centuries of abuse, exclusion and discrimination. Peru was the
first country in Latin America to make such an apology.
(AP, 11/28/09)(SSFC, 7/21/13, p.A5)
2010 Jan 12, Kenn Allan Davis
(78), newspaper illustrator and mystery novel writer, died at his
home in Placer County, Ca. His 8 detective novels featured Carver
Bascombe, an African American private eye. The first in the series
was titled “The Dark Side” (1976), co-written with John Stanley.
(SFC, 1/19/10, p.C3)
2010 Mar 23, Senegal's national
assembly adopted a bill declaring slavery and the slave trade crimes
against humanity, moving closer to becoming the first African nation
to pass such legislation.
(AFP, 3/24/10)
2010 Apr 20, Dorothy Height
(98), a longtime leader of the US civil rights movement and the
chairwoman of the National Council of Negro Women, died in
Washington, DC.
(Reuters, 4/20/10)
2010 Apr 21, In Mississippi
Richard Barrett (67), a white supremacist lawyer, was fatally
stabbed and beaten at his home in Pearl. The next morning the house
was set on fire and Vincent McGee (22), a black neighbor, was
charged with murder. On April 23 three others were charged with
accessories after the fact and arson. In 1966 Barrett had founded a
supremacist group called the Nationalist Movement, but it never
amounted to much.
(SFC, 4/24/10, p.A7)
2010 May 24, The US Supreme
Court ruled that a group of African Americans may sue the city of
Chicago for discriminatory use of an application test that kept them
from being hired as firefighters.
(SFC, 5/25/10, p.A4)
2010 Oct 22, Ephren Taylor
resigned from City Capital and has since been replaced by Jeff M.
Smuda. Taylor allegedly took one million dollars from members at New
Birth Missionary Baptist Church near Atlanta. Smuda was elected
chairman of the failing company shortly after Taylor’s resignation.
According to their SEC, filing Jeff M. Smuda is an expert in
restructuring companies to profitability. Taylor was soon dubbed
“the black Bernie Madoff.”
(Econ, 1/28/12, p.63)(http://tinyurl.com/8a6vrqw)
2010 Nov 24, In California Rep.
steve Cooley conceded defeat to Dem. Kamala Harris for the office of
attorney general. Harris became the state’s first woman, the first
African American and the first Indian American in California history
to be elected as state attorney general.
(SFC, 11/25/10, p.A1)
2010 Dec 6, Poland's parliament
got notice of its first ever African lawmaker, a teacher and
Christian pastor from Nigeria who has lived in Poland for 17 years
and proven himself a popular local leader. John Abraham Godson (40),
a councilman in the central city of Lodz, will fill a seat in the
national parliament vacated by a fellow lawmaker from the Civic
Platform party.
(AP, 12/7/10)
2010 Dec 8, Pres. Obama signed
legislation to pay American Indians and black farmers some $4.6
billion for government mistreatment over many decades. The
legislation settled 4 long-standing Native American water rights in
Arizona, New Mexico and Montana.
(SFC, 12/9/10, p.A18)
2010 Ira Berlin authored “The
Making of African America: The Four Great Migrations.”
(Econ, 2/13/10, p.84)
2011 Feb 23, Allen Willis
(b.1916), African American filmmaker, died in Oakland, Ca. His work
included “Have You Sold Your Dozen Roses” (1955), produced with San
Francisco poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and “Stagger Lee” (1970), a
documentary interview with incarcerated Black Panther leader Bobby
Seale.
(SFC, 3/7/11, p.C3)
2011 Mar 17, The US Justice
Dept. accused the New Orleans Police Dept. of systematic misconduct
that violated the Constitution. A report said officers had engaged
in racial profiling against the city’s black majority from January
2009 to May 2010 and used deadly force against 27 people.
(SFC, 3/18/11, p.A4)
2011 May 25, The final segment
of Oprah Winfrey’s TV talk show, taped a day earlier, aired after a
25 year run.
(SFC, 5/26/11, p.A8)
2011 Jun 3, In Tanzania former
Black Panther Party leader Elmer "Geronimo" Pratt (63), died. Pratt
was convicted in 1972 of being one of two men who robbed and fatally
shot schoolteacher Caroline Olsen on a Santa Monica tennis court in
December 1968. The conviction was overturned after he spent 27 years
in prison for a crime he maintained he did not commit.
(AP, 6/3/11)
2011
Jun 14, At its annual conference in Phoenix, the Southern Baptist
Convention, until thirty years ago a nearly all-white organization,
elected an African-American pastor, Rev. Fred Luter Jr. of New
Orleans, to the position of first vice president. This is the
highest position ever held by a black minister, and was seen by
members as further proof that the Convention is committed to ethnic
diversity.
(NYT, 6/15/11)
2011 Jun 26, In Mississippi
James Craig Anderson (49), a black man, was run over a killed by
Deryl Dedmon, a white teenager, in a pickup truck in Jackson. The
event fueled anger and an FBI investigation after a surveillance
tape of the incident was made public. Dedmon was later charged with
capital murder. On March 21, 2012, Dedmon pleaded guilty received
two concurrent life sentences for the racially motivated murder of
Anderson.
(SFC, 8/18/11, p.A8)(SFC, 8/20/11, p.A6)(Reuters,
3/21/12)
2011 Aug 22, The Cherokee
nation, the USA’s second-largest Indian tribe, formally booted from
membership thousands of descendants of black slaves who were brought
to Oklahoma more than 170 years ago by Native American owners.
(Reuters, 8/23/11)
2011 Sep 13, A federal order
for one of the nation's largest American Indian tribes to restore
voting rights and benefits to about 2,800 descendants of members'
former slaves threw plans for a special election for a new Cherokee
Nation chief into turmoil. The tribe said that it would not be
dictated to by the US government over its move to banish African
Americans from its citizenship rolls.
(AP, 9/13/11)(Reuters, 9/13/11)
2011 Sep 21, In Texas white
supremacist and gang member Lawrence Russell Brewer (44) was
executed for the infamous June 7, 1998, dragging death slaying of
James Byrd Jr.
(AP, 9/22/11)
2011 Sep 26, In Portugal George
Wright (68), named as one of the hijackers of a Delta flight in
1972, was taken into custody by local police. The US government
sought his extradition for escaping from a New Jersey jail after
being convicted of murder. Wright was convicted of the 1962 murder
of gas station owner Walter Patterson, a decorated World War II
veteran shot during a robbery at his business in Wall, New Jersey.
In November a Lisbon court denied the US request for his
extradition.
(AP, 9/28/11)(AP, 11/17/11)
2011 Oct 5, Rev. Fred
Shuttlesworth (89), a dynamic leader of the civil rights movement,
died in Birmingham, Alabama.
(SFC, 10/6/11, p.A7)(Econ, 10/15/11, p.100)
2011 Oct 16, In Washington DC
thousands of people spanning all ages and races honored the legacy
of the nation's foremost civil rights leader during the formal
dedication of the new Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial.
(AP, 10/17/11)
2012 Feb 1, Don Cornelius (75),
the man who created Soul Train (1971-1993), was reportedly found
dead at his Los Angeles home.
(ABCNews, 2/1/12)
2012 Feb 22, Pres. Obama and
others took part in the formal groundbreaking for the National
Museum of African American History and Culture on the National Mall,
scheduled to open in 2015.
(SFC, 2/23/12, p.A9)
2012 Feb 26, In Florida Trayvon
Martin (17) of Miami was shot dead by George Zimmerman (28), a white
Neighborhood Watch captain, after he took a break from watching NBA
All-Star game television coverage to walk 10 minutes to a
convenience store to buy snacks. He was visiting his father and
stepmother in a gated townhome community called The Retreat at Twin
Lakes in Sanford, 20 miles north of Orlando. On April 11 Zimmerman
was charged with second-degree murder.
(Reuters, 3/7/12)(http://tinyurl.com/74n7rwe)(AP,
4/11/12)
2012 Apr 26, In Michigan the
Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia held its grand opening at
Ferris State Univ. in Big Rapids. David Pilgrim, the founder and
curator, started building the collection as a teenager.
(AP, 4/19/12)
2012 May 19, The NAACP passed a
resolution endorsing same-sex marriage as a civil right and opposing
any efforts "to codify discrimination or hatred into the law."
(AP, 5/19/12)
2012 Jul 24, Sherman Hemsley
(b.1938), African-American actor best know for his role as George
Jefferson, died in El Paso, Texas. He debuted as George Jefferson in
1973 in the “All in the Family” sitcom. From 1975-1985 he continued
in “The Jeffersons.” From 1986 to 1991 he played Deacon Ernest Frye
in “Amen.”
(SFC, 7/25/12, p.C5)
2012 Yuval Taylor and Jake
Austen authored “Darkest America: Black Minstrelsy From Slavery to
Hip-op.”
(SSFC, 8/26/12, p.G5)
2013 Apr 4, Alabama lawmakers
voted to allow posthumous pardons to the Scottsboro Boys, 9 black
teens who were wrongly convicted of raping two white women over 80
years ago.
(SFC, 4/5/13, p.A5)
2013 Jul 16, The police chief
of Oakland, Ca., said his force was understaffed and that officers
have struggled to cope with 3 nights of protests in the wake of the
acquittal of George Zimmerman in Florida. The local protests left
many downtown businesses vandalized.
(SFC, 7/17/13, p.A1)
2013 Joshua Bloom authored
“Black Against Empire: The History and Politics of the Black Panther
Party.”
(SSFC, 2/24/13, p.F1)
2014 Jan 9, Amiri Baraka
(b.1934), poet, playwright and black nationalist, died in New
Jersey. He was born as Everett LeRoi Jones and changed his
name in 1965 following the assassination of Malcolm X. His play
“Dutchman” won the 1964 Obie Award for best American play.
(SFC, 1/10/14, p.D5)
2014 Jan 25, Morrie Turner
(b.1923), cartoonist and the creator of the “Wee Palls” (1965)
cartoon strip, died in Sacramento, Ca. He was the first African
American cartoonist to draw a nationally syndicated strip exploring
racial themes during the peak of the civil rights movement and
beyond.
(SFC, 1/29/14, p.E1)
2014 Apr 27, President Barack
Obama said that comments reportedly made by Donald Sterling,
the owner of the LA Clippers pro basketball team, are "incredibly
offensive racist statements," before casting them as part of a
continuing legacy of slavery and segregation that Americans must
confront.
(AP, 4/27/14)
2014 Apr 29, NBA Commissioner
Adam Silver announced that Donald Sterling (80), the owner of the LA
Clippers, would be banned from the NBA for life and fined $2.5
million for his recent racist comments. Additional punishment
included barring Sterling from any NBA games or practices.
(SFC, 4/30/14, p.A1)
2014 May 28 Maya Angelou
(b.1928), American poet, writer and civil rights activist, died at
her home in Winston-Salem, NC. Her 1969 memoir “I Know Why the Caged
Bird Sings” was the first of her seven memoirs.
(SFC, 5/29/14, p.A11)(Econ, 6/7/14, p.98)
2014 Jun 11, Ruby Dee (b.1922),
acclaimed actress and civil rights advocate, died at her home in New
Rochelle, NY. She had become famous for her supporting role in the
stage play “A Raisin in the Sun” (1959). She also starred in the
film version (1961).
(SFC, 6/13/14, p.A16)
2014 Jul 3, In the Netherlands
an Amsterdam court ruled that the traditional figure known as Black
Pete, the sidekick to the Dutch equivalent of Santa Claus, is a
negative stereotype of black people and the city must rethink its
involvement in holiday celebrations involving him.
(AP, 7/3/14)
2014 Jul 24, The first archive
dedicated to the culture and experiences of black people in Britain
opened in Brixton, south London, with the aim of shining a light on
a long overlooked history.
(AFP, 7/25/14)
2014 Sep 20, J. California
Cooper (82), author and playwright, died in Seattle. Her 1991 novel
“Family” told a multigenerational story that began with a woman born
as a slave. Her 1978 play “Stranger” earned her the Black Playwright
of the Year award.
(SFC, 9/25/14, p.D5)
2014 Nov 12, A Swedish official
in Kiruna said a bus driver has been sacked for forcing black people
off her bus, highlighting lingering xenophobia in a country
traditionally known for tolerance.
(AFP, 11/12/14)
2014 Allyson Hobbs authored “A
Chosen Exile: A History of Racial Passing in American Life.”
(SSFC, 11/9/14, p.N4)
2015 Jan 3, Edward Brooke
(b.1919), former Massachusetts senator (1966-1978) died at his home
in Coral Gables, Florida. Brooke was the first black person to be
elected as senator in any state since Reconstruction.
(SSFC, 1/4/15, p.C9)
