Marcus Allen, tailback for the Univ of Southern California, wins the Heisman Trophy
On this date in 1957, New York became the first city to legislate against racial or religious discrimination in housing market with adoption of Fair Housing Practices Law.
On this date in 1957, Martin Luther King Jr. awarded Spingarn Medal for his leadership of the Montgomery Bus Boycott.
On this date in 1955, Carl Murphy, publisher of the Baltimore Afro-American, awarded Spingarn Medal for his contributions as a publisher and civil rights leader.
On this date in 1955, Historic bus boycott began in Montgomery. At a mass meeting at the Holt Street Baptist Church Martin Luther King Jr. was elected president of the boycott organization. Asa Philip Randolph and Willard S. Townsend elected vice-president of the AFL-CIO.
On this date in 1946, President Truman created Committee on Civil Rights by Executive Order No. 9808. Two Blacks Attorney Sadie M. Alexander and Channing H. Tobias were members of the committee.
On this date in 1946, Spingarn Medal presented to Thurgood Marshall, director of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, “for his distinguished service as a lawyer before the Supreme Court.”
On this date in 1946, in the aftermath of World War II, mob violence and lynching of Black Americans, in conjunction with the continuing controversy about segregation in American society, led President Harry S. Truman to issue Executive Order 9808 on this day which set up a committee to study the protection of civil rights in the United States.
On this date in 1935, Educator, Mary McLeod Bethune, founds National Council of Negro Women.
On this date in 1935, Langston Hughes’s play, The Mulatto, began a long run on Broadway.
Swing Age began with the commercial success of big bands. The decade of the thirties was the heyday for big bands of Chick Webb, Andy Kirk, Cab Calloway, Count Basis, Jimmie Lunceford and Duke Ellington.
On this date in 1935, Mary McLeod Bethune awarded Spingarn Medal for her work as founder-president of Bethune Cookman College and her national leadership.
Born on this day in Chicago, Illinois, James Cleveland, the King of Gospel, first sang gospel under the direction of Thomas Dorsey at the Pilgrim Baptist Church.
On this date in 1932, Singer, “Little Richard”, was born
Born on this day, Charity Earley became the first Black commissioned officer in the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps in 1942.
On this date in 1895, Elbert Frank Cox was born on this day in Evansville, Indiana. He became the first Black to hold a doctorates degree in mathematics which he received from Cornell University, Ithaca, New York in 1925.
On this date in 1881, Forty-seventh Congress (1881-83) convened. Two Black congressmen, Robert Smalls, South Carolina; John R. Lynch, Mississippi.
On this date in 1870, Alexandre Dumas(Pere), French novelist and dramatist, dies.
Born this day in Travis County, Texas, only 5’7″ and 145 pounds, Pickett was one of the toughest cowboys. Invented unique form of steer wrestling called “bulldogging”. Died Apr. 2, 1932.
Born on this day, Sarah Gorham was the first woman appointed by the AME Church in 1888, to serve as a missionary to any foreign country.
On this date in 1784, Phyllis Wheatley, the first African-American author to be published in book form, dies in poverty at the age of thirty-one. Wheatley astonished Bostonians with her ability to write poetry while yet being a slave.
Salem Poor was a Black hero of the Revolutionary War. He distinguished himself so in battle that fourteen American officers praised him before Congress. On this day, a memorial was dedicated to him at Cambridge, Massachusetts which carried the citation that “under our own observation, we declare that A Negro Man Called Salem Poor of Col. Fryes Regiment, Capt. Ames. Company in the late Battle of Charleston, behaved like an Experienced Officer, as Well as an Excellent Soldier, to Set forth Particulars of his Conduct would be Tedious, We Would Only beg leave to say in the Person of this Negro Centers a Brave and gallant Soldier.
