Billy Sims is awarded the Heisman trophy
On this date in 1981, John Jacobs is named president of the National Urban League.
ON this date in 1972, W. Sterling Cary elected president of the Nation Council of Churches.
On this date in 1942, Reginald F. Lewis was born in Baltimore, Maryland. He received his law degree from Harvard Law School in 1968. He was a partner in Murphy, Thorpe & Lewis, the first Black law firm on Wall Street. In 1989 he became president and CEO of TLC Beatrice International Holding Inc.
On this date in 1941, Lester Granger named executive director of the National Urban League.
On this date in 1941, the Spingarn Medal was presented to novelist Richard Wright, “one of the most powerful of contemporary writer,” for “his powerful depiction in his books, ‘Uncle Tom’s Children,’ and ‘Native Son,’ of the effect of proscription, segregation and denial of opportunities to the American Negro.”
On this date in 1941, Dorie Miller of Waco, Texas, messman on USS Arizona, manned machine gun during Pearl Harbor attacks and downed four planes. He was awarded the Navy Cross.
On this adte in 1931, Comer Cottrell, founder and president of Pro-Line Corporation (1970), the largest African American owned business in the Southwest and the first African American to be part owner of a major league baseball team (1989), the Texas Rangers, was born.
On this date in 1895, Sir Milton Margai, first Prime Minister of Sierra Leone, is born
On this date in 1885, Seventy-four Blacks reported lynched.
On this date in 1885, Forty-ninth Congress (1885-87) convened. Two Black congressmen: James E. O’Hara, North Carolina; Robert Smalls, South Carolina.
On this date in 1874, White Democrats killed seventy-five Republicans in massacre at Vicksburg, Mississippi.