Ross, J. Bailing Press Sept 05, 1899 Patent No. 632,539

On this date in 1960, Leopold Sedar Senghor, poet, politician, is elected President of Senegal.

On this date in 1916, Novelist Frank Garvin Yerby, winner of the O. Henry short story award winner, born on this date. He was the first African American to write a best-selling novel and to have a book purchased by a Hollywood studio for a film adaptation. During his career, Frank wrote thirty-three novels and sold more than fifty-five million hardback and paperback books worldwide. Yerby’s first literary success came in 1944, when he received the O. Henry Memorial Award for his short story “Health Card.” Yerby also went on to write, “The Foxes of Harrow,” which focuses on the racial inequities faced by an African American soldier and his wife.

On this date in 1895, George Washington Murray was elected to Congress by South Carolina.

Our Nig by Harriet Wilson, the first novel published in the U.S. by an African American woman, is published. It was lost for years until reprinted with a critical essay by African American scholar Henry Louis Gates, Jr. in 1983.

On this date in 1846, Secretary of the American Negro Academy, John W Cromwell was born.

On this date in 1804, Absalom Jones ordained a priest in the Protestant Episcopal Church.