Jonathan A. Rodgers becomes president of CBS’s television stations division, the highest ranking African American in network television. Rodgers had been general manager of WBBM-TV, CBS’s Chicago Station
On this date in 1970, Representatives from 27 African nations, the Caribbean nations, four South American countries, Australia, and the U.S. meet in Atlanta for the first Congress of African People.
Lincoln Motion Picture Company owned by African Americans Noble Johnson and Clarence Brooks releases its first feature length film, A Man’s Duty on this date in 1919.
Five soldiers hanged for alleged participation in Houston riot of 1917.
NAACP leader, Charles Hamilton Houston was born on this day.
John Stephens Durham, assistant editor of the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin, named minister to Haiti.
Cotton pickers organized union and staged strike for higher wages in Texas on this date in 1891.
On this date in 1868, the Lower house of Georgia legislature, ruling that Blacks were ineligible to hold office, expelled twenty-eight representatives. Ten days later the senate expelled three Blacks. Congress refused to admit the state until the legislature seated the Black representatives.
U.S. Army commander in South Carolina ordered Freedmen’s Bureau to stop seizing abandoned land on this date in 1865.
On this date in 1838, Frederick Douglass, disguised as a sailor escapes from slavery
On this date in 1783, Richard Allen, founder of the AME Church, purchases his freedom with his earnings as a self-employed teamster.