The position of Secretary of Agriculture was awarded to Alphonso Michael “Mike” Espy, making him the first Black to hold this position.

On this date in 1881, Exodus of five thousand Blacks from Edgefield County, South Carolina. Migrants, protesting exploitation and violence, settled in Arkansas.

On this date in 1881, Tennessee started modern segregation movement with Jim Crow railroad car and was followed by Florida (1887), Mississippi (1888), Texas (1889), Louisiana (1890), Alabama, Kentucky, Arkansas and Georgia (1891), South Carolina (1898), North Carolina (1899), Virginia (1900), Maryland (1904), Oklahoma (1907).

On this date in 1881, United Order of True Reformer established.

Born on this day in Oglethorpe, GA, Octavia R. Albert’s, The House of Bondage is published; the book consists of seven slave narratives collected by Albert, a former slave.