Established to address the deep-seated dissatisfaction with the history of slavery and to honor Black Culture and history, today, November 20^th, is National Day of Zumnbi and Black Consciousness Day in countries like Brazil, and because it is, do you know that November Black History also includes:

• 16^th - Nigerian author Chinua Achebe was born (1930); Zina Garrison was born (1963); Lisa Bonet was born (1967); Pam Johnson was named publisher of the Ithaca (NY) Journal, and became the first Black American woman to head a daily newspaper (1981);

• 17^th - Omega Psi Phi Fraternity was founded on the campus of Howard University (1911); Susan Rice was born (1964); Barbara Jordan and Andrew Young made history as the first Black Americans from the south to be elected to Congress since the Reconstruction era (1972); WHHM, the first Black-operated radio station, aired for the first time at Howard University (1980); Audre Lorde succumbed (1992); Esther Rolle succumbed (1998);

• 18^th - Sojourner Truth was born (1787); Warren Moon was born (1956); Sinbad was born (1956); United Nations Ambassador Andrew Young was awarded the Spingarn Medal (1978); Cab Calloway succumbed (1994);

• 19^th - Roy Campanella was named MVP in National League Baseball for the second time (1953);

• 20^th - Howard Seminary (later Howard University) was founded (1865); Pauli Murray was born (1910); Garret T. Morgan received the patent for the traffic signal (1923); Dominique Dawes was born (1976);

• 21^st - Granville T. Woods received the patent for the electric railway conduit (1893);

• 22^nd - Marcus Garvey gave his speech outlining “The Principles of The Universal Negro Improvement Association” (1922); Elijah Muhammad established the Nation of Islam (1930); Guion “Guy” Bluford, the first Black astronaut, was born (1942); Colonel Frederick D. Gregory became the first Black American to lead a space mission (1989);

• 23^rd - A.J. Beard received the patent for the “Jenny Coupler”, still in use today to connect railroad cars (1897); John L. Love received the patent for the pencil sharpener (1897); Bobby Lee Rush was born (1946); Robin Roberts was born (1960); August Wilson received the Pulitzer Prize for drama (1990 );

• 24^th - Scott Joplin was born (1868);

• 25^th – Thirty-five formerly enslaved survivors of the Amistad returned home to Africa (1841); Ralph J. Bunche was awarded the Spingarn Medal (1949); Bill “Bojangles” Robinson succumbed (1949); Suriname gained independence from the Netherlands (1975); Flip Wilson succumbed (1998);

• 26^th – Tina Turner was born (1939); Charles Gordone became the first Black playwright to receive the Pulitzer Prize (1970);

• 27^th – Christopher J. Perry founded The Philadelphia Tribune (1884); Jimi Hendrix was born (1942); Dorothy Height was elected as president of the National Council of Negro Women (1957); Robin Givens was born (1964); Jaleel White was born (1976); Charles Johnson received the National Book Award for Fiction (1990);

• 28^th – Berry Gordy was born (1929); Richard Wright succumbed (1960); Ernie Davis became the first Black to win the Heisman Trophy (1961);

• 29^th - Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall was born (1908); Adam Clayton Powell Jr. was born (1908); Alice Childress became the first Black woman to receive an Obie Award (1955); Coleman Young succumbed (1997); Singer Rihanna was named the National Hero of Barbados (2021); and

• 30^th - Samuel R. Scottron received the patent for the curtain rod (1889); J.A. Sweeting received the patent for the cigarette-rolling device (1897); Gordon Parks was born (1912); Shirley Chisholm was born (1924); Judith Jamison debuted with Alvin Ailey’s American Dance Theatre (1965); Coleman Young received the Springarn Medal (1891)?

November marks the following significant events in US Black History:

• 1867: Freedmen in Virginia registered to vote for the first time.

• 1922: The Harlem Renaissance began.

• 1935: Two Black teenagers were lynched by a mob of 700 white people in Colorado County, TX.

• 1957: Texas officials threatened and jailed NAACP officers for not disclosing their membership.

However, do you know that November Black History also includes:

• 1^st – The first free school, the African Free School, opened (1787); Mississippi approved the use of literacy and understanding test to disenfranchise Black citizens (1890); C.W. Allen received the patent for the self-levelling table (1898); W.E.B. Du Bois began publishing the NAACP’s Crisis Magazine (1910); Florene Mills succumbed (1927); John H. Johnson published the 1st issue of The Negro Digest (1942); John H. Johnson published the 1st issue of Ebony Magazine (1945); Dr. Charles S. Johnson became the first Black president of Fisk University (1946); John H. Johnson founded Jet Magazine (1951); Clarence Thomas was formally seated as the 106th Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court (1991); South Africans voted in their first all-race local government elections, completing the destruction of the apartheid system (1995); Stanford University introduced its African American History Couse concentrating on the Modern Freedom Struggle (2007);

• 2^nd - Menelik II, the former emperor of Ethiopia, was crowned King of Kings of Abyssinia, Ethiopia (1889); Haile Selassie was crowned Emperor of Ethiopia (1930); Charles C. Diggs was elected Michigan’s first Black congressman (1954); Condoleezza Rice was born (1954); Nelly was born (1974); President Ronald Reagan officially signed the law declaring the third Monday in January as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day (1983); Carol Mosely Braun became the first Black woman elected to the U.S. Senate (1992);

• 3^rd - John W. Menard made history as the first Black person elected to Congress (1868); John Baxter Taylor, the 1st Black American Olympic Gold Medalist, was born (1882); J.H. Hunter received the patent for the portable weighing scale (1896); Paul Robeson was presented with the Spingarn Medal (1945); Larry Holmes was born (1949); John Conyers Jr. was elected to the House of Representatives (1964); Thirman L. Milner was elected mayor of Hartford, CT, and became the first Black mayor in New England (1981); Jesse Jackson announced his candidacy for President (1983);

• 4^th - Cathay Williams, the only known female Buffalo Soldier, was born (1844 ); Thomas Elkins received the patent for the refrigeration apparatus (1879); Patricia Bath was born (1942); Hulan Jack was elected borough president of Manhattan and became the highest ranking Black municipal official at the time (1954); Sean Combs was born (1969); Zina Garrison became the first Black to win the Junior Singles Tennis Championship at Wimbledon (1981); President-elect Barack Obama delivered his historic victory speech (2008);

• 5^th - Theo Wright became the first Black American to receive a Theology Degree (1836); Ike Turner born (1931); the Maryland Court of Appeals ordered the University of Maryland to admit Donald Murray (1935); Art Tatum succumbed (1956) Shirley Chisolm became the first Black woman elected to Congress (1968); Walter E. Washington became the first elected Washington, DC Mayor since Reconstruction (1974); George Brown (CO) and Mervyn Dymally (CA) were elected lieutenant governors respectively, becoming the first two Blacks in the nation to hold the position (1974); Damon J. Keith received the Springarn Medal (1974); The governor of Arizona officially refused to acknowledge Dr. King Day as a national holiday (1986); Shirley Verret succumbed (2010); Jonathan Scott Holloway was inaugurated as the first Black president of Rutgers University (2021);

• 6^th - George Poage was born (1880); James Weldon Johnson and J. Rosamond Johnson composed “Lift Every Voice and Sing”, widely regarded as the Black national anthem (1900); W.E.B. Du Bois was awarded the Spingarn Medal (1920); W.A. Scott Jr. founded the Atlanta Daily World newspaper (1928); Sharon Pratt Kelly became the first woman mayor of Washington, D.
  C. (1990);

• 7^th - Meharry Medical College was founded at Central Tennessee College (1876); Arthur L. Mitchell defeated Oscar DePriest in Chicago to become the first Black Democratic congressman (1934); L. Douglas Wilder was elected governor of VA, and became the nation’s first Black governor since the Reconstruction (1989); David Dinkins became the first Black mayor of New York City (1989); Jimi Hendrix inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (1991);

• 8^th – The racially motivated Wilmington Massacre, occurred in Wilmington, NC (1898); Ester Rolle was born (1933); Crystal Bird Faucet was elected state representative in PA and became the first Black woman to serve in a state legislature (1938); Alfre Woodard was born (1953); John H. Johnson was awarded the Spingarn Medal (1966); Edward W. Brooke was elected the first Black U.S. senator since Reconstruction (1966);

• 9^th – Benjamin Banneker was born (1731); Howard University Medical School opened (1868); Powell Clayton called out the Arkansas State Militia and declared martial law in 10 counties in a bid to put down a Ku Klux Klan-led insurrection (1868); William Monroe Trotter founded The Guardian newspaper in Boston, MA (1901); Dorothy Dandridge (1922); Mattiwilda Dobbs became the first Black person to sing a romantic lead at the Metropolitan Opera (1956); Sisqo was born (1975);

• 10^th - Granville T. Woods received the patent for the electric railway (1891); George H. White introduced the first anti-lynching legislation in the U.S. Congress (1898); Charlie Sifford won the Long Beach Open and became the first Black to win a major professional golf tournament (1957); Andrew T. Hatcher was named associate press secretary by President John F. Kennedy, and became the first Black person to hold the position (1960); Wilson Goode was elected and became Philadelphia’s first Black mayor (1983); Carmen McRae succumbed (1994);

• 11^th - Nat Turner is executed after leading a slave revolt in Southampton County, VA, and white mobs killed many other Blacks in response to his revolt against slavery (1831); George R. Carruthers received the patent for the image converter for detecting electromagnetic radiation (1969); Angola proclaimed its independence (1975); The Civil Rights Memorial was dedicated in Montgomery, AL (1989);

• 12^th - General George Washington issued an order barring free Blacks from serving in the army (1775); Henry Ossawa Tanner won the silver medal at the Paris Exposition (1900); Sigma Gamma Rho, Sorority Inc. was founded by Mary Lou Allison Gardner Little, Dorothy Hanley Whiteside, Vivian Irene White Marbury, Nannie Mae Gahn Johnson, Hattie Mae Annette Dulin Redford, Bessie Mae Downey Rhoades Martin, and Cubena McClure (1922); Madame Lillian Evanti founded the National Negro Opera Company (1941); Ernest Nathan Morial made history as the first elected Black Mayor of New Orleans, LA (1977); Alex Haley awarded the Spingarn Medal (1977); Wilma Rudolph succumbed (1994);

• 13^th - The Liberty Party, the nation’s first anti-slavery political party, was formed in Warsaw, N.Y. (1839); Albert C. Richardson received the patent for the casket-lowering device (1894); Dr. Daniel Hale Williams became the first Black elected to the American College of Surgeons (1913); the Harlem Renaissance began (1922); Janet Collins became the first Black ballerina to appear with the Metropolitan Opera Company (1951); Whoopi Goldberg was born (1955); The United States Supreme Court upheld a lower court ruling which banned segregation on public buses in Montgomery, AL (1956); Carl Stokes elected as mayor of Cleveland, Oh, and became the first Black elected Mayor of a major American city (1967); Dwight Gooden became the youngest pitcher to win the Cy Young award (1985);

• 14^th – Booker T. Washington succumbed (1915); Valerie Jarret was born (1956); or

• 15^th - Payton Johnson received the patent for the swinging chair (1881); Arthur Dorrington became the first Black person to play organized hockey (1950); Professor Arthur Lewis received the Nobel Prize in economics, and became the first Black person to receive the award in a category other than peace (1979); Rosa Parks awarded the Springarn Medal (1979)?

It is still Black History Month in Ireland, the United Kingdom, and the Netherlands, and because it is, do you know that October Black History also includes:

• 16^th - Million Man March was held in Washington, D.C. (1995); Black Olympic sprinters Tommie Smith and John Carlos, who engaged in a silent protest on the medal stand to bring light to the racial discrimination and violence against Black people in the U.S., were met with hostility by white supporters and the media (1968);

• 17^th – Capital Savings Bank of Washington, D.C., was organized (1888); Mae Jemison was born (1956); Congressman Elijah Cummings succumbed (2019);

• 18^th - Ntozake Shange was born (1948);

• 19th - Byrd Prillerman, co-founder of Virginia State College, was born (1859); Joseph H. Rainey, Robert C. Delarge, and Robert B. Elliott became the first Black Republicans elected to the House of Representatives (1870); Paul Robeson opened in Othello at the Shubert Theater in New York City (1943); Harriet Ida Pikens and Frances Wills were sworn in as the first Black females in the Navy (1960); 52 individuals, including Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., were arrested in Atlanta following a sit-in protest (1960);

• 20^th - Colonial Virginia authorizes enslavers to kill enslaved resisters (1669); John Merrick, Dr. Aaron McDuffie Moore, and Charles Clinton Spaulding founded the first Black owned insurance company, North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance (1898);

• 21^st – Abolitionist, William Lloyd Garrison attacked by a white mob in Boston, MA (1835); James H. Conyers became the first Black admitted to the US Naval Academy (1872) Dizzy Gillespie was born (1917); Mary Louise Smith was arrested for refusing to give up her seat in the “whites only” section of a Montgomery, AL city bus (1955); Lois Alexander opened the Black Fashion Museum in Harlem (1979); Bertram M. Lee and Peter C.B. Bynoe purchased a controlling interest in the Denver Nuggets and became the first Black Americans to own a controlling interest in an NBA team (1989);

• 22^nd - Clarence S. Green became the first board-certified Black neurological surgeon (1953);

• 23^rd - The National Urban League (1911); the NAACP petitioned the United States on racial conditions in the U.S. (1947);

• 24^th - Republic National guilty of discrimination against Black Americans and women (1980); Italy invaded Ethiopia (1935); ‘Mulatto’, a play by Langston Hughes and the first long-run Black play, opened on Broadway (1935); Kweisi Mfume was born (1948); Birmingham City Officials announce plan to close city parks rather than permit racial integration (1961); the African nation of Zambia gained independence (1964);

• 25^th - The Black newspaper owners’ group—the NNPA (Na­tional Newspaper Publishers Association) was founded (1940); Benjamin O. Davis, Sr. became the first Black general in the United States Army (1950); an estimated 10,000 students led by Jackie Robinson, Harry Belafonte, and A. Phillip Randolph, participated in a march for integrated schools in Washington, D.C. (1958); Gov. George Wallace granted a full pardon to Clarence “Willie” Norris—the last known survivor of the nine “Scottsboro Boys” (1976); Toronto Blue Jays, Cito Gaston became the first Black American to manage a team to the World Series (1992);

• 26^th – The British parliament legalizes slavery in the American colony, which would become known as Georgia (1749); B.F. Randolph was assassinated (1868); Texas passed a law to restrict Black people from testifying in Court (1866); T. Marshal received the patent on the fire extinguisher (1872); Mahalia Jackson was born (1911);

• 27^th – P.B. Downing received the patent for the street letter mailbox (1891); Ruby Ann Wallace -aka- Ruby Dee was born (1924); President John F. Kennedy intervened to get Martin Luther King Jr. released from the Georgia State Prison (1960); Benjamin O. Davis, Jr., became the first Black Brigadier General in the US Air Force (1964); Andrew Young was elected mayor of Atlanta, GA (1981);

• 28^th - Levi Coffin (White), one of the founders of the Underground Railroad, was born (1798); Edward M. McIntyre became the first Black elected mayor of Augusta, GA (1981);

• 29^th - Alonzo G. Moron becomes the first Black American president of Hampton Institute (1949); U.S. Supreme Court, in the case of Alexander v. Holmes County Board of Education, ruled that public school districts must end segregation “at once” and operate only unitary, integrated schools (1969); Pearl Primus succumbed (1994); A report was published suggesting that the old self-hate mantra of “I am Black enough; I don’t need any sun­shine” by Dr. Jonathan Mansbach’s lends well to American are not getting enough sunshine or more specifically, vitamin D—the sunshine vitamin, and an astonishing 90 percent of Black children being vitamin D deficient;

• 30^th – Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the Rev. Ralph Abernathy were arrested and forced to begin serving sentences in a Birmingham jail (1967); Muhammad Ali defeated George Foreman (1974); Richard Arrington was elected the first Black mayor of Birmingham, AL (1979); and

• 31^st – Ethel Waters was born (1896); Booker T. Washington was inducted into the Hall of Fame for Great Americans (1945); Earl Francis Lloyd became the first Black player in the National Basketball League (1950)?

Do you know that October marks Black History Month in Ireland, the United Kingdom, and the Netherlands?

Or that October Black History includes:

• Negro Musicians’ Union, Local 493 -aka- Negro Musicians’ Union, Local No. 493 was formed in Seattle, WA (1913);

• The US Navy began admitting Black women via the WAVES (Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service) program (1944);

• Ralph Bunche became the first Black man to receive the Nobel Peace Prize (1950);

• Colin Powell began serving as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (1989);

• Dr. Belinda Miles became the first Black American and first female President of Westchester Community College (2015);

• Barack Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize (2009);

• Simone Biles won her 5^th winning her 5th consecutive all-around world gymnastic title and her 25th world medal (2019);

• Bubba Wallace won the NASCAR Cup Series race and became the first Black driver to win since 1963 (2021)?

And that it also includes explicitly:

• 1^st – The Spingarn Medal was awarded to NAACP secretary Walter White for his role as an advocate in the anti-lynching movement (1937); Dr. Charles Drew was named supervisor of the “Plasma for Great Britain” project (1940); Joseph ‘Joe’ Black became the first Black pitcher to win a World Series game (1952); Nigeria declared independent (1960);

• 2^nd - Nat Turner was born (1800); Thurgood Marshall sworn in as the first Black Supreme Court Justice (1967); Robert H. Lawrence, the named first Black Astronaut, succumbed in a plane crash before his mission (1967); Edward J. Perkins was appointed Ambassador to South Africa (1986); August Wilson succumbed (2005);

• 3^rd - Mary McLeod Bethune opened the Daytona Normal and Industrial School in Daytona Beach (1904 ); Jesse B. Blayton, Sr. became the first Black radio station owner/ operator in the US when he purchased WERD (1949); Henrietta Lacks passed away from cervical cancer after treatment at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, MD (1951); Nat King Cole became the first Black performer to host his own TV show (1956); Frank Robinson was named the first Black manager in Major League Baseball (1974); O.J. Simpson was acquitted (1995);

• 4^th - The first Black daily newspaper, The New Orleans Tribune, was founded (1864); H. Rap Brown -fka- Hubert Gerold Brown -aka- Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin was born (1943); Howard Lee elected first Black mayor of Chapel Hill, NC (1969); Charles Evers became the first Black mayor of Fayette, MS (1969); The Martin L. King, Jr. Federal Building in Atlanta, GA, is the first federal building in the US dedicated to his name (1988); Congress passes a bill authorizing the creation of 500,000 Black Revolutionary War Patriots Commemorative coin (1996); Krista Mann became the first Black female Lieutenant of the Mount Vernon Police Department (2019);

• 5^th – Monroe Baker because the first Black mayor of any American city when he took office in St, Martin, LA (1967); Booker T. Washington entered Hampton Institute (1872);

• 6^th - Jack Trice, the first Black athlete at Iowa State, was assaulted by players from the University of Minnesota in a racially motivated attack (1838); the first National Black Convention took place in Troy, N.Y (1847); The Fisk Jubilee Singers of Fisk University began their first national singing tour (1871); Fannie Lou Hamer was born (1917); the first legal interracial marriage in the US took place in NC when John Wilkinson and Lorraine Mary Turner wed (1971);

• 7^th – William Sill is born (1821); The honorable Elijah Muhammad was born (1897); Archbishop Desmond Mpilo Tutu was born (1931); Amiri Baraka -aka- LeRoi Jones was born (1934); Alabama Troopers attacked Black citizens registering to vote in Selma, AL (1963); Carl Stokes is elected the first Black mayor of a major American city, Cleveland, OH (1967); Toni Morrison was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in Literature (1993);

• 8^th – The Council of Officers officially barred enslaved and free Blacks from joining the Continental Army (1775); Jack Trice died from hemorrhaged lungs and internal bleeding resulting from injuries sustained during the Iowa State vs. University of Minnesota assault (1923); Jesse Jackson was born (1941); Jackie Robinson was banned from playing interracial baseball in Alabama (1953);

• 9^th - Benjamin Banneker succumbed (1806); O.B. Clare received the patent for the trestle (1888); Mary Ann Shadd, the first Black woman publisher in North America, was born (1823); Uganda gained independence (1962); W. Wilson Goode became the first Black mayor of Philadelphia, PA (1984);

• 10^th – The African Free School opened (1788); the first exclusively Black parish in the United States, Saint Francis Xavier Church in Baltimore, MD, was purchased (1863); Isaac R. Robinson received the patent for the bicycle frame (1899); Frederick Douglass Patterson, founder of the United Negro College Fund, was born (1901); James Melvin “Jimmie” Lunceford was born (1902); Theolonius Monk was born (1917); David N. Dinkins was born (1927); Quincy Jones was born (1933); Porgy and Bess premiered (1935); Ben Vereen was born (1946); James ‘Sylvester’ Sylvester was born (1947); Otis M. Smith was appointed to the Michigan Supreme Court (1961); Black Panther Party was founded (1966); Ralph H. Metcalfe succumbed (1978); Mya was born (1979);

• 11^th - Alexander Miles received the patent for improved methods for opening and closing electric elevator doors and shafts (1887); Granville T. Woods received the patent for the telephone system and apparatus (1887);

• 12^th - W. Montague Cobb was born (1904); Dick Gregory was born (1932);

• 13^th - Martin de Porres, the first Black saint in the Roman Catholic Church, was born (1579); Jerry Rice was born (1962);

• 14^th - Ellen Richie, John Templeton, John Moore, and Stanley Cuthbert were criminally charged for teaching Black people how to read (1834); Garrett T. Morgan received the patent for the gas mask (1914); Marcus Mosiah Garvey was shot and wounded in an assassination attempt (1920); Washington, D.C. Bar Association voted to accept Black members (1958); Martin Luther King, Jr became the youngest man ever to win the Nobel Peace Prize (1964); or

• 15^th – The US Supreme Court struck down the down Civil Rights Act of 1875 and legitimized segregation (1883); Fela Kuti, the pioneer of Afrobeat, was born (1938); William Hastie was nominated for the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals (1949); Wyomia Tyus became the first woman to win a gold medal in the 100-meter race in two consecutive Olympic games (1968); Clarence Thomas was confirmed as an Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, and became the second Black American to serve on the court (1991)?

Do you know that September Black History also includes:

• 16^th – France abolished slavery in all its territories (1848); the first Catholic seminary for Black priests was dedicated in Bay St. Louis, MS (1923); Jon Hendricks was born (1921); Riley ‘B.B.’ King was born (1925); “Emperor Jones” staring Paule Robeson, and the first Hollywood film with a Black leading man and a white supporting case was released (1933); Elgin Baylor was born (1934); President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Selective Service Act, which allowed Black people to enter all branches of the US Military Service (1940); Debbye Turner became the 3^rd Black woman to be crowned Miss America (1989);

• 17^th - The United States Constitution was approved with three clauses allowing for the continuation of slavery even though it was supposed to be a document of freedom (1787); Harriet Tubman made her first attempt to liberate herself from the bonds of slavery (1849); Hampton Institute (now University) was founded (1861); The “Flip Wilson Show” premiered on NBC (1970); Illinois became the first state to honor Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. with a state holiday (1973); Vanessa Williams was crowned the first Black Miss America (1983);

• 18^th - Booker T. Washington delivered the Atlanta Exposition speech (1895); Brook Benton -aka- Benjamin Franklin Peay was born (1931); Jimi Hendrix succumbed (1970);

• 19^th - Elbert R. Robinson received the patent on the electric highway trolley (1893); Joe Morgan was born (1943); the First International Conference of Blac Writers and Artists was held in Paris (1956);

• 20^th – A boycott of slave produced goods was called during the First National Convention for Free Men (1830); Alfre Woodard won an Emmy for Outstanding Guest Performance (1987);

• 21^st - General Andrew Jackson honored Black troops who fought in the Battle of New Orleans (1815); FW Leslie patented the envelope seal (1891); John Henry Conyers became the first Black student at Annapolis Naval Academy (1872);

• 22^nd - Emancipation Proclamation announced (1862); George Washington Murray was born (1853); Ralph Bunche became the first Black person to receive a Nobel Prize (1950);

• 23^rd – Mary Church Terrel was born (1863); J.W. Reed patented the Dough Kneader and Roller and became the first Black woman to receive a US patent (1884); John Coltrane was born (1926); Ray Charles was born (1930);

• 24^th - Federal troops enforce court-ordered integration of Central High School, Little Rock, AR (1957); John T. Walker installed as the first Black bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington (1977);

• 25^th - Peter “The Black Prince” Jackson won the Australian heavyweight title and became the first Black man to win a national boxing crown (1886); Barbara Hancock became the first Black woman named as a White House Fellow (1974);

• 26^th - Sonny Liston knocked out Floyd Patterson and became the heavyweight boxing champion (1962); The Studio Museum of Harlem opened (1968); Serena Williams was born (1981);

• 27^th - Hiram R. Revels, the first Black U.S. Senator, was born (1827); W.C. Handy published “Memphis Blues” (1912); Mamie “Peanut” Johnson, the only woman to pitch for the Negro Major League was born (1935); Charles H. Houston was awarded the Spingarn Medal for his pioneering work in developing the NAACP legal campaign (1950);

• 28^th – The National Baptist Convention was organized (1895); Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. began holding a series of meetings of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (1959); Althea Gibson succumbed (2003);

• 29^th - The National Urban League was founded (1910); the first Black-owned television station in the US, WGPR-TV Detroit, began broadcasting (1975); Alex English was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame (1997); and

• 30^th - John “Johnny” Royce Mathis was born (1935); James Meredith enrolled as the first Black at the University of Mississippi (1962)?

Do you know that September Black History includes:

• David Walker released his militant antislavery pamphlet, An Appeal to the Colored People of the World, one of the earliest of its kind (1829); Robert T Freeman becomes the first Black person to graduate from Harvard Dental School (1867); Mother Katharine Drexel and the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament established Xavier University in New Orleans, the first Black coeducational secondary school in the US (1915); Ralph J. Bunche was appointed as the acting United Nations mediator in Palestine by the UN Security Council (1948);

• 1^st – Halle T.D. Johnson became the first woman of any race to practice medicine in the state of Alabama (1891); Daniel “Chappie” James became the first Black four-star general in the US Air Force (1975); Ethel Waters succumbed (1977); Jasper Cureton was sworn in as the first Black member of a newly formed S.C. Appeals Court (1983);

• 2^nd – Anna DeCosta Banks was born (1869); John Parker received U.S. Patent #304,552 for the “Parker Pulverizer” (1872); Frederick M. Jones received a patent for a control device for an internal combustion engine (1958); Frank Robinson was named MVP of the American League (1966); Frances Tiafoe became the first Black man to reach the US Open semifinals since Arthur Ashe (2022);

• 3^rd - Frederick Douglass escaped from slavery (1838); Charles Hamilton Houston was born (1895); Alabama made racial segregation mandatory (1901); five Black soldiers were hanged without due process for their alleged participation in the erroneously called Camp Logan Riot (1918); Geraldine W. Travis was born (1931); eleven Black students desegregated the Charleston County South Carolina public schools (1963); Robert Maynard became the first Black American to head a daily newspaper, the Oakland Tribune (1979); Jonathan A. Rodgers became the highest ranking Black in network television when named president of CBS Television Stations Divisions(1990);

• 4^th – Lewis Latimer was born (1848); a race riot occurred in Clinton, MS (1875); New Orleans integrated its Catholic schools (1962); Beyoncé Knowles was born (1981); Katherine Dunham became the first Black choreographer for the Metropolitan Opera (2001);

• 5^th - John W Cromwell was born (1846); Harriet Wilson self-published “Our Nig”, the first US novel by a Black woman (1859); Leopold Sedar Senghor was elected president of Senegal (1960);

• 6^th - Frederick Douglass elected president of the National Black Political Convention (1848); Leander Jay Shaw, Jr., was born (1930); Idris Elba was born (1972); Lee Roy Young Jr. was sworn in as the first Black Texas Ranger in modern history (1988);

• 7^th – John Merrick, co-founder of the North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Company, was born (1859); Washington, DC and Baltimore, MD integrated public schools (1954); Jacob Lawrence was born (1917); Ghana becomes the first African country to break from White colonial rule and became an independent nation (1957); Tupac Shakur succumbed (1996);

• 8^th – Roy Wilkins succumbed (1901); Buck Leonard was born (1907); Ruby Bridges was born (1954); Althea Gibson became the first Black athlete to win the U.S. Open (1957); Dorothy Dandridge succumbed (1965); Joseph A. De Laine, Levi Pearson, and Harry and Eliza Briggs were posthumously awarded the Congressional Gold Medal (2004);

• 9^th - The Stono Rebellion occurred at Stono Bridge, SC (1739); Paul Cuffee succumbed (1817); Alexander Lucius Twilight received his B.A. degree from Middlebury College and became the Black American college graduate (1817); Arthur Ashe Jr. became the first Black man to win the U.S. Open Men’s Singles Tennis Championship (1968); James Earl Jones succumbed (2024);

• 10^th - John Roy Lynch was born (1847); John Mercer Langston became the first Black to hold elective office in the US when elected township clerk of Brownhelm, OH (1855); Father Divine succumbed (1965); the U.S. Postal Service honored Henry Ossawa Tanner, the first Black American artist elected to the National Academy of Design, with a commemorative stamp (1973); Mordecai W. Johnson succumbed (1976);

• 11^th - Edward Kennedy “Duke” Ellington awarded the Springarm Medal (1959); Henrie Monteith, James L. Solomon Jr., and Robert Anderson enrolled at the University of South Carolina, becoming the first Black students to attend since Reconstruction (1963); Ludacris was born (1977); Quincy Jones won an Emmy for musical composition for the miniseries, Roots (1977);

• 12^th – Jessie Owens was born (1913); Jackie Robinson was named the National League Rookie of the Year (1947); Steve Biko was murdered (1977); Dr. Mae C. Jemison became the first Black woman to travel in space (1992);

• 13^th - The first documented slave rebellion involving Black slaves and white indentured servants was set to take place but was intercepted by a White House Servant (1663); Alain Locke (1886) was born; Nell Carter was born (1948);

• 14^th - Constance Baker Motley was born (1921); Nasir Jones -aka- Nas, was born (1973); or

• 15^th – The First National Negro Convention was held in Philadelphia, PA (1830); Jan E. Matzeliger was born (1852 ); Carter G Woodson founded the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History, now the Association for the Study of African American Life and History (1915); Julian Edwin “Cannonball” Adderley was born (1928); Addie Mae Collins, Denise McNair, Carole Robertson and Cynthia Wesley were killed when the 16^th Street Baptist Church was bombed by white supremacist and the KKK (1963); Thomas “Hit Man” Hearns became the first Black man to win boxing titles in five different weight classes (1987)?

Do you know that August Black History also includes:

• 16^th – Rebellious slaves known as Maroons engaged British military forces in Charlestown, SC (1768); Robert L. Johnson succumbed (1938); George Olden became the first Black artist to design a U.S. postage stamp (1963);

• 17^th – Marcus Garvey was born (1887); Gabon proclaimed independent (1960); Roberto Clemente became the second baseball player featured on a US Postage stamp (1984); Pearl Bailey succumbed (1990);

• 18^th – The First Seminole War consisting of forces of Native and Black Americans ended in defeat (1818); Amelia Boynton Robinso was born (1911); Leon Bridges was born (1932); Rafer Johnson was born (1936); James Meredith became the first Black awarded a bachelor’s degree by the University of Mississippi -aka- Ole Miss (1963); Jimi Hendrix performed at Woodstock (1969); Lil’ Romeo was born (1989);

• 19^th – 24^th – A large-scale race riot occurred in New Haven, CT (1967);

• 20^th - At least 20 African indentured servants, not slaves arrived in Jamestown, VA aboard a Dutch ship (1619); Massachusetts became the first colony to legalize slavery by statute (1641); Wynston Brown became president of the National Negro Bowling Association (1939); Don King was born (1931); Isaac Hayes was born (1942); Senegal proclaimed independent (1960);

• 21^st - Harriet M. West became the first Black woman to serve as a major in the Women’s Army Corps (1943);

• 21^st – 23^rd - Nat Turner Rebellion occurred in Southampton County, VA (1831); Wilt Chamberlain was born (1936); George Jackson succumbed (1971); Robert Tool, the first man implanted with a self-contained artificial heart, spoke on National TV (2001);

• 22^nd – The Haitian Revolution began (1791); Fisk University founded (1876); John Lee Hooker was born (1917);

• 22^nd - 23^rd – Frederick Douglass chaired the Fugitive Slave Law Convention (1850);

• 23^rd – International Day for the Remembered of the Slave Trade and its Abolition; Jean Baptiste Lislet-Geoffroy was born (1755); Jean-Baptiste Lislet-Geoffrey becomes the first Black correspondent of the French Academy of Sciences (1786); John Brown Russwurm becomes the first Black in America to graduate college (1826); James Stone enlisted in the Union Army and became the first Black to fight for the Union during the Civil War (1861); Kobe Bryant was born (1978);

• 24^th – Edith Samson became the first Black American appointed as a UN Representative (1950);

• 25^th – Althea Gibson was born (1927); Arthur Ashe Stadium opened as the largest tennis stadium at the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center (1997);

• 26^th – Hale Woodruff, founder of Atlanta University Shows for African American Artists, was born (1900); Valerie Simpson was born (1946); Patrick Gaspard became the US Ambassador to South Africa (2013);

• 27^th – W.E.B. DuBois succumbed (1963);

• 28^th – Slavery abolished in the United Kingdom (1833); Emmit Till was abducted, tortured and lynched (1955); ); ‘Please Mr. Postman’ by The Marvelettes charted No.1 single on Billboard (1961); Jackie Robinson met with Branch Rickey, president and general manager of the Dodgers and learned of the plan to integrate Major League Baseball (1945); the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom occurred and Dr. Martain Luther King, Jr., delivered his ‘I Have a Dream’ speech (1963); Hurricane Katrina struck land (2005); Barack Obama accepted the Democratic nomination for President (2008); Andrw Gillum won the Democratic Primary for Governor of Florida (2008); Colin Kaepernick silent protested by kneeling during the National Anthem (2016); Chadwick Boseman succumbed (2020);

• 29^th – Dinah Washington was born (1924); Michael Jackson was born (1958); Malvin Goode became the first Black American television news commentator (1962); or

• 30^th – Gabriels’ Rebellion occurred in Richmond, VA (1797); Roy Wilkins was born (1901); Mirror of Freedom, the first Black magazine began publication (1938); Fred Hampton was born (1948); Guion (Guy) S. Bluford, Jr. became the first Black American astronaut to make a space flight on board the space shuttle Challenger (1983)?

Do you know that August Black History includes:

• 1^st - Slavery abolished in all British territories (1834); slavery abolished in Jamaica (1838) Blacks voted for the first time in the state of Tennessee (1867); St. Augustine’s University, the Black private liberal arts college founded (1867) Augustus Nathaniel Lushington, the first Black American Doctor of Veterinary Medicine was born (1869); Charles Clinton Spaulding was born (1874); Mary Eliza Mahoney became the first Black grade from a nursing school when she graduated from New England Hospital for Women and Children nursing program (1879); Joseph Hayne Rainey, the first Black person to serve in the House of Representatives and the second Black person to serve in Congress, succumbed (1887); Henrietta Lacks was born (1920); The National Bar Association was formed (1925); Geoffry Holder was born (1930); Benjamin E. Mays named president of Morehouse College (1936); Harlem Race Riot occurred (1943); Adam Clayton Powell became the first Black elected to congress (1944); Carlton Douglas ‘Chuck D’ Ridenhour was born (1960); Dahomey proclaimed independent (1960); Whitney Young, Jr., named Executive Director of the National Urban League (1961); Coolio was born (1963); Arthur Ashe became the first Black man to play for the US Davis Cup team (1964); James Patterson Lyke was installed as Auxiliary Bishop of the Cleveland Diocese of the Roman Catholic Church (1979); Barbara Ross-Lee became the first Black woman to head a medical school after assuming the Dean of Ohio University College of Osteopathic Medicine role (1993); Ron Brown appointed head of the Department of Commerce (1993);

• 1^st – 2^nd - The national convention of the Universal Negro Improvement Society occurred (1920);

• 2^nd – A delegation of 50 met to demand that Blacks in VA be granted legal title to land occupied during the Civil War (1865); George Washington Williams, the first person to write an objective and scientifically researched history of Black people in the United States, succumbed (1891); James A. Baldwin was born (1924); Chokwe Lumumba, an early leader of the black separatist organization Republic of New Afrika was born (1947); The Charles R. Drew Post Graduate Medical School (now known as Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science) received its charter (1966); Thomas ‘Hit Man’ Hearns wins the WBA welterweight title (1980);

• 3^rd – Lloyd Ray patented the dustpan (1897); The Atlanta Daily World began publication as the first Black daily newspaper (1928); Niger proclaimed independence (1960); Jackie Joyner-Kersee became the first woman to repeat as Olympic heptathlon champion (1992);

• 4^th – Louis ‘Satchmo’ Armstrong was born (1901); principal founder of Chicago’s Provident Hospital and the physician who performed the first successful open-heart surgery, Dr. Daniel Hale Williams succumbed (1931); Debbie Sims Africa was born (1956); Barack Obama was born (1961); civil rights workers, James Chaney, Andrew Good­man and Michael Schwerner found dead on a farm near Philadelphia, MS (1964); Thomas Sankara was named president of Burkina Faso (1983);

• 5^th - Bill ‘The Black Terro’ Richmond, the first Black boxer to gain international recognition, was born (1763); Andrew Johnson reversed Special Field Order #15, which granted land abandoned or confiscated from slave-owning whites to former slaves (1865); Upper Volta proclaimed independent (1960); Nelson Mandela arrested and imprisoned (1962); William “Bill” Pinkney became the first Black American and the fourth person in the world to circumnavigate the globe alone by boat (1990); the first Black woman general in the US Army, Hazel Johnson-Brown succumbed (2011); the Montgomery Riverfront Brawl/the Montgomery Riverfront Beatdown occurred (2023); Kamala Harris became the first Black woman to secure a major party's nomination for President of the United States (2024);

• 6^th- Jamaica achieved independence (1962); The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was signed into law by Lyndon B. Johnson (1965); David Robinson was born (1965); Bayard Rustin succumbed (1987);

• 7^th – Ralph J. Bunche, the first Black winner of the Nobel Prize, was born (1904); Alice Coachman, becomes the first African American woman to win an Olympic gold medal (1948); the Senate confirmed Charles Henry Mahoney as the first Black to serve as a full delegate to the United Nations (1954); Jonathan P. Jackson succumbed (1970); The shootout at San Rafael occurred, Angela Davis was implicated and went into hiding (1970); Kenneth Gibson became the first Black mayor of an Eastern city when he assumed post in Newark, NJ (1970);

• 7^th – 8^th – A large-scale race riot occurred in Lansing, MI (1966); the first Black actor to achieve international success, Ira Frederick Aldridge, succumbed (1967);

  8^th – Matthew Henson, was born (1866); Ivory Coast proclaimed independent (1960);

• 9^th – Jesse Owns won four gold medals at the Berlin Summer Olympics (1936); James Benton Parsons becomes the first Black as the United States District Court Judge for Northern Illinois (1961); Whitney Houston was born (1963); Gregory Hines succumbed (2003); Bernie Mac succumbed (2008); Mike Brown succumbed (2014);

• 10^th - James Conway Farley, the first Black American to achieve prominence in the photography industry, was born (1854); Shirley Chisholm became the first Black woman elected to Congress (1970); Isaac Hayes succumbed (2008);

  11^th – Frederick Douglass spoke before an audience during an anti-slavery convention on Nantucket Island (1841); Alex Haley was born (1921); DJ Kool Herc birthed Hip-Hop when he hosted a party in the Bronx (1973); Anthony Phills received US patent #5136787 for a ruler template for a computer (1992);

• 11^th – 16^th – Chad proclaimed independence; (1960); Watts Riot/Watts Uprising occurred (1965);

• 12^th – Gladys Bentley was born (1907); Fredrick Douglass’ Washington, DC home declared a national shrine (1922); Ophelia DeVore-Mitchell was born (1923); Hugo Pinell was involved in the attempted prison break to liberate George Jackson (1971);

• 13^th – Spelman College opened the first Black nursing school (1881); Eva Dykes, the first Black woman to earn a doctoral degree, was born (1893); James B. Parsons, the first Black to serve as a judge in US District Court was born (1911); the red, black and green Pan-African flag formally adopted by The Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League (1920); Kathleen Battle was born (1948);

• 13^th – 14^th – The Brownsville Affair/The Brownsville Raid occurred when white residents accused the Black soldiers of the 25^th US Infantry Regiment of shooting a white bartender and wounding a white police officer (1906); Fidel Castro was born (1927);

• 14^th Bois Caiman the Voudou Ceremony that led to the first large scale uprising of the enslaved in Saint Domingue occurred (1791); Ethel Payne, the first Black woman radio and tv commentator at a national news organization, was born (1911); Teddy Roosevelt signed the Social Security Act and established the guaranteed pension system for workers to retire at age 65 (1935); Earvin ’Magic’ Johnson was born (1959); Halle Berry was born (1966); Prairie View State University founded (1976); and

• 15^th – Oscar Peterson was born (1925); Congo Brazzaville proclaimed independent (1960); Horace Julian Bond succumbed (2015)?

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Do you know that July Black History also includes:

• 16^th - Ida B. Wells Barnett was born (1862); Donald Payne was born (1934); Janelle “Penny” Commissiong was crowned as the First Black Miss Universe (1977);

• 17^th - Billie Holiday succumbed (1959); Eric Garner succumbed (2014);

• 18^th - L.C. Bailey was granted patent #620,286 for the folding bed (1899); Nelson Mandela, was born (1918); Assata Shakur was born (1947);

• 19^th - The Washington, DC Red Summer riot occurred (1919);

• 20^th - Freeman Robertson Bosley, Jr., the first Black mayor of St. Louis, MO, was born (1954); more than one thousand attended the first Black Power Conference in Newark, NJ (1967);

• 21^st - The first daily Black newspaper, The New Orleans Tribune, published in English, was launched (1864); Mary Church Terrell was elected president of the newly founded National Association of Colored Women (1896);

• 22^nd - George Clinton was born (1941); Danny Glover was born (1946);

• 23^rd - E. McCoy received the patent for steam engine lubricator (1872); Jackie Robinson was inducted into the Major League Baseball Hall of Fame (1962);

• 24^th - Karl Malone was born (1963); Barry Bonds was born (1964);

• 25^th - Emmett Till was born (1941); Walter Payton was born (1953); Willie Mae “Big Mama” Thornton succumbed (1984);

• 26^th - Patrick Francis Healy became the first Black American ever to earn a PhD (1865); President Harry Truman issued Executive Order 9981 to end segregation in the Armed Services (1948);

• 27^th - Garret Morgan succumbed (1963); Charles Leroy, the first Black American secret service agent, succumbed (2011);

• 28^th - Section 3 of the Act of Congress authorized the formation of the two regiments of cavalry composed of “colored” men, and those regiments were later nicknamed the “Buffalo Soldiers” (1866 ); NAACP’s Silent Protest Parade on NYC’s Fifth Avenue occurred (1917); The National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders (The Kerner Report) was created (1967);

• 29^th - The first National Convention of Black women was held in Boston, MA (1895); George Dixon, the first Black person to win a world title in any sport, was born (1870); Chester Himes was born (1909); Haben Girma, the first deaf and blind graduate of Harvard Law School, was born (1988);

• 30^th - Laurence Fishburne was born (1961); Langston Hughes succumbed (1967); Lisa Leslie became the first woman to dunk in a professional basketball game (2002); and

• 31^st - Father Patrick Francis Healey, was named President of Georgetown University and became the first Black American to be named President of a Major US University (1874); Deval L. Patrick was born (1956); Wesley Snipes was born (1962); Attorney Arnette R. Hubbard was installed as the first woman president of the National Bar Association (1981)?

Do you know that July 4^th used to be a protest holiday for enslaved Americans, and that July Black History includes:

• 1^st – Slavery was abolished in the Dutch West Indies (1861); James W. Smith became the first Black cadet student at West Point (1870); Frederick Douglass was appointed Minister to Haiti (1889); Thomas Dorsey, The Father of Gospel Music, was born (1899); the East St. Louis, IL Race Riot occurred, resulting in 300 deaths, and the destruction of 317 businesses and 44 railcars (1917); Roland Hayes was named a soloist with the Boston Symphony Orchestra (1924); Ghana became a republic (1960); Somalia proclaimed independent (1961); Carl Lewis was born (1961); Kigali City became the capital city of Rwanda (1962); Andre Braugher was born (1962); Missy Elliott was born (1971); Learie Constantine, international cricketer and first Black UK peer, succumbed (1971); Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five released ‘The Message’ (1982); Paulie Murray succumbed (1985); Clarence Thomas nominated to the US Supreme Court (1991); National Black Family Month was established by The Black Women’s Agenda, Inc. (2006); Michelle J. Howard became the first Black woman US Navy four-star Admiral (2014); President Barack Obama announced that the U.S. would resume full diplomatic relations with Cuba (2015);

• 2^nd - Vermont became the first American colony to abolish slavery (1777); E. McCoy received Patent No. 129,843 for the lubricator for steam engines (1872); Thurgood Marshall was born (1908); Medgar Evers was born (1925); Patrice Lumumba was born (1925); David Lynch was born (1929); Edward Bullins was born (1935); Fontella Bass was born (1940); – Charles Hall became the first Black American fighter pilot to down enemy aircraft (1943); President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (1964); the Supreme Court upheld affirmative action as a remedy for past job discrimination (1986); Dexter Dillard Eure Sr. succumbed (2015);

• 3^rd - Members of the Army’s segregated 10th Cavalry Regiment (“Buffalo Soldiers”) were attacked while preparing to participate in the Bisbee, AZ Independence Day parade (1919); The Hazel Scott Show premiered on the DuMont Television Network, making her the Black American woman to have her television show (1950); Montel Williams was born (1956); Moises Alou was born (1966); Calvin Smith was crowned the fastest man alive (1983);

• 4^th - New York State abolished slavery (1827); William Watkins wrote an “Independence Day” lamentation and reflection for Black Americans under the penname of “A Colored Baltimorean” (1831); William Lloyd Garrison, Sojourner Truth, Lucy Stone, and Henry David Thoreau addressed a rally sponsored by the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society (1854); Booker T. Washington established the Tuskegee Institute in a one-room shanty near Butler Chapel African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church. Thirty adults represented the first class, with Dr. Booker T. Washington as the first teacher (1881); Jack Johnson soundly beat Jim “The Great White Hope” Jeffries (1910); The Voice: A Newspaper for the New Negro — the first newspaper of the “New Negro Movement,” edited by Hubert H. Harrison — made its debut at a rally held at the Metropolitan Baptist Church in Harlem (1917); The Black World’s Fair -aka- The American Negro Exposition began in Chicago (1940); Epsy Campbell Barr was born (1963); Marian Anderson and Ralph Bunche were awarded the first Medals of Freedom from President John F. Kennedy, the creator of the award (1963 ); Clyde Kennard, succumbed (1963); Hundreds non-violently protest against the Gwynn Oak Amusement Park’s Segregation Policy (1963); ‘Fight the Power’ was released by Public Enemy on the Motown Records label (1989); The National Civil Rights Museum was dedicated at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, TN (1991); Steve McNair succumbed (2009);

• 5^th - Frederick Douglass delivered his powerful speech, "What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July? (1852); Anna Arnold Hedgeman was born (1899); Arthur Ashe became the first Black man to win the men’s singles title at Wimbledon when he defeated Jimmy Connors (1975);

• 6^th - Della Reese was born (1931); Phyllis Hyman was born (1949); Althea Gibson became the first Black woman tennis champ when she won the women’s singles at Wimbledon (1957); Dr. Henry Sampson invented the cell phone (1971); Louis Armstrong succumbed (1971); Henry T. Sampson received the patent for gamma-electric cell (1971);

• 7^th - Leroy Robert “Satchel” Paige was born (1906); Lisa Leslie was born (1972);

• 8^th - Billy Eckstine was born (1914); Venus Williams won her second straight Wimbledon Women’s Singles Championship (2001); David Harold Blackwell, the first African American elected to the National Academy of Sciences, succumbed (2010);

• 9^th - William T. Francis was named U.S. Minister and Consul to Liberia (1927); O.J. Simpson was born (1947); E. Frederic Morrow became the first Black American to serve in an executive position on a United States president’s cabinet when he joined President Eisenhower’s staff as Administrative Officer for Special Projects (1955);

• 10^th - Francis Lewis Cardozo became the first Black cabinet officer at the state level when he was sworn in as South Carolina's Secretary of State (1868); Dr. Daniel Hale Williams performed the world’s first open-heart surgery on a young man named James Cornish at Provident Hospital in Chicago (1893); David Dinkins was born (1927); Arthur Ashe was born (1943);

• 11^th - Mifflin Wistar Gibbs, publisher of the first Black newspaper in California, succumbed (1915); Mattiwilda Dobbs was born (1925);

• 11^th – 14^th - The Niagara Movement was founded by W.E.B. Du Bois and William Monroe Trotter (1905);

• 12^th - Actress and Founder of the Negros People Theater, Rose McClendon, succumbed (1936); Frederick McKinley Jones received Patent No. 2475841 for the air conditioning unit (1949);

• 14^th - Sarah E. Goode made history as the first Black American woman to receive a patent from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (Patent #322,17) for inventing the cabinet bed (1885); and

• 15^th - Forest Whitaker was born (1961); James H. McGhee was sworn in as Dayton, OH’s first Black mayor (1970)?

Do you know that June Black History also includes:

• 16^th - Adam Wade became the first Black nationally televised game show host (1975); Tiger Woods won the U.S. Open (2002);

• 17^th – Peter Salem and Salem Poor were commended for their service on the American side at the Battle of Bunker Hill (1775); Congress authorized President Lincoln to accept African Americans in the Union Army (1862); James Weldon Johnson was born (1871); the U.S. Navy commissioned its first African American officer, Harvard Medical student Bernard Whitfield Robinson (1942); Venus Williams was born (1980); nine black worshippers were killed in a racially motivated attack during Bible Study (2015);

• 18^th - Law Enforcement Officers in Gadsden, AL, tortured Civil Rights Protesters (1963); the Supreme Court banned racial discrimination in sale and rental housing (1968);

• 19^th - Joachim Pease earned the Congressional Medal of Honor (1864); enslaved Blacks in Texas were (finally) told they were free (1865); Henry O. Flipper became the first Black West Point graduate (1877); Phylicia Rashad was born (1948); U.S. Congress issued a formal apology to Black Americans for the enslavement of our ancestors (2009);

• 20^th - NAACP was incorporated (1911); Elbert Williams was lynched (1940); Harry Belafonte became the first Black to win an Emmy (1960); Muhammad Ali was convicted in a Houston federal court of violating the Selective Service Act by refusing to be inducted into the armed services (1967);

• 21^st - Joseph Hayne Rainey was born (1832); Henry Ossawa Tanner was born (1859); civil rights workers, James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner disappeared near Philadelphia, MS (1964); Edgar Ray “The Preacher” Killen was convicted of the murders of civil rights workers James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner (2005);

• 22^nd - Congress readmitted the state of Arkansas on the condition that it would never change its constitution to disenfranchise Black Americans (1868); Willie Mae Ford Smith was born (1904); Katherine Dunham was born (1909); Joe Louis defeated James J. Braddock and became heavyweight boxing champion of the world (1937); Edward Rudolph “Ed” Bradley Jr. (1941); Benjamin O. Davis Jr. became the first Black US Air Force General (1959); The state legislature of Louisiana repealed the last racial classification law in the United States (1983);

• 23^rd - Wilma Rudolph was born (1940); Bob Marley was given an official state funeral in his homeland of Jamaica (1981);

• 24^th - John Lynch was elected temporary chairman of the Republican convention and became the first Black to preside over deliberations of a national party (1884); the rules committee of the Democratic National Convention approved the nomination of Yvonne Brathwaite Burke as co-chairperson of the convention (1972);

• 25^th - President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued an executive order forbidding discrimination in defense industries after pressure from blacks led by A. Philip Randolph (1941); Carolyn Cheeks was born (1945); Supreme Court Invalidates key provision of Voting Rights Act at Southern States’ Request (2013); Michael Jackson succumbed (2009);

• 26^th - Oregon Territory bans free Black people (1844); Mordecai Johnson became the first Black president of Howard University (1926); W.E.B Du Bois resigned from his position at the NAACP (1934); Martin Luther King, Jr. was denied freedom of speech when at a Chicago church (1967); Derek Jeter was born (1974);

• 27^th - Frederick Jones received a patent for the ticket dispensing machine (1839); Paul Laurence Dunbar was born (1872); Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall announced his retirement (1991);

• 28^th – Sengbe Pieh, also known as Joseph Cinque, was captured and enslaved

  with others illegally (1839); William Henry Hunt was born (1863); Malcolm X founded the Organization for Afro-American Unity (1964);

• 29^th - Kwame Ture, formerly Stokely Carmichael, was born (1941); The Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth's Bethel Street Baptist Church was bombed (1958); and

• 30^th - Lena Horne was born (1917); Larry Doby became the manager of the Chicago White Sox (1978)?

Do you know that June Black History includes:

• 1^st – The 6^th National Negro Convention met in Philadelphia (1835); Sojourner Truth left New York and began her career as an anti-slavery activist (1843); Morgan Freeman was born (1937); The Greenwood/Black Wallstreet/Tulsa Race Massacre ended (1921); Glory Van Scott was born (1947); approximately 2,400 persons attended White House Conference on Civil Rights (1966); WGPR becomes the first Black-owned television station (1973); Andrew F. Brimmer became the first Black governor of the Federal Reserve Board (1995); Betty Shabazz succumbed (1997);

• 2^nd – Harriet Tubman became the first woman to lead an armed assault during the Civil War as part of the Combahee River Raid (1863); Janie Bradford was born (1939); VA judge upholds segregation in classrooms (1961); Samuel L. Gravely Jr. became the first Black Admiral in the U.S. Navy (1971);

• 3^rd – Roland Hayes was born (1887); Charles Drew was born (1904); Josephine Baker was born was born (1906); Liberty Life Insurance Company, the first legal reserve company organized by Blacks in the North, incorporated (1919); Wesley Brown became the first Black graduate of Annapolis Naval Academy (1949);

• 4^th - Samuel L. Gravely was born (1922); Angela Davis was acquitted of all murder and conspiracy charges (1972); Arna Bontemps succumbed (1973);

• 5^th – Three Blacks address the political gathering at the Republican Party National Convention in Philadelphia (1872); G.W. Murray received patents for a fertilizer distributor, cotton chopper, and a seed planter (1872); John Carlos was born (1945); Martin Luther King Jr. was awarded his doctorate from Boston University (1955);

• 6^th – Jean Baptist Pointe Du Sable established a settlement which would eventually grow into the city of Chicago (1790); Roy Innis was born (1934); Marian Wright Edelman was born ( 1939); E. R. Shipp was born (1955); James Meredith was shot during the “March Against Fear” (1966); NASA selected Dr. Mae Jemison as the first Black woman to train a space shuttle astronaut (1987);

• 7^th - Gwendolyn Brooks was born (1917); Yolande “Nikki Giovanni” Cornelia Giovanni, Jr. was born (1943); Prince was born (1958); President Jimmy Carter christened the month of June as Black Music Month (1979); Lloyd Richards won a Tony as best director for the August Wilson play Fences (1987);

• 8^th - U.S. Supreme Court ruled that segregation in Washington D.C. was unlawful (1953); Kanye West was born (1977);

• 9^th – Alain R. Locke succumbed (1954); Fannie Lou Hamer was arrested and beaten in Winona, MS (1963); Leroy Robert Paige (better known as “Satchel Paige”) succumbed (1982); John Conyers announced a call for a reparations study (1989);

• 10^th - Richard Allen founded the Bethel African Methodist Church (1794); Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint Georges succumbed (1799); Hattie McDaniel was born (1898); Marcus Garvey succumbed (1940); Jack “Galveston Giant” Johnson succumbed (1946); Charles B. Rangel succumbed (2010);

• 11^th - Vivian Malone and James Hood, escorted by federalized National Guard troops, enrolled at the University of Alabama (1963);

• 12^th - Medgar W. Evers was assassinated (1963); the National Black MBA Association was incorporated (1972);

• 13^th - Eleanor Holmes was born (1937); Thurgood Marshall was named to the Supreme Court (1967);

• 14^th - George Washington Carver received a patent for producing paints and stains (1927); John Edgar was born (1941); and

• 15^th - Henry O. Flipper became the first Black West Point graduate (1877); Bessie Coleman received her pilot's license (1921); William H. Gray became the first Black Democratic Party Majority Whip (1989)?

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Do you know May Black History also includes:

• 16^th – William Harry Barnes became the first Black surgeon certified by any American surgical board (1927); Janet Jackson was born (1966); Jan E. Matzeliger Day was declared in Lynn, MA (1967); A. Philip Randolph succumbed (1979); Sammy Davis Jr. succumbed (1990);

• 17^th - Oliver Lewis became the first Black jockey to win the Kentucky Derby (1875); National Baptist Convention was chartered (1915); William H. Hastie was inaugurated as the first Black governor of the U.S. Virgin Islands (1946 ); the U.S. Supreme Court declared segregation in public schools unconstitutional in the Brown v. Board of Education decision (1954); Sugar Ray Leonard was born (1956); E. Franklin Frazier, the first Black President of the American Sociological Association, succumbed (1962);

• 18^th – Reggie Jackson was born (1946); the Plessy vs. Ferguson Supreme Court decision upheld the doctrine of “separate but equal” education and public accommodations (1896); Mary McLeod Bethune succumbed (1955); Ernie Davis, the first Black player to win the Heisman Trophy, succumbed (1963);

• 19^th - Malcolm X -fka- Malcolm Little was born (1925); Playwright Lorraine Hansberry was born (1930); Grace Jones was born (1948); Willy T. Ribbs became the first Black motorsports driver to qualify for the Indy 500 (1991);

• 20^th - Haitian revolutionary Toussaint L’Ouverture was born (1743); Lawrence Tero was born (1952); U.S. Attorney General Robert Kennedy dispatched U.S. Marshals to Montgomery, AL., to restore order in the “Freedom Rider” disturbance (1961); Trevor Tahiem Smith, Jr. -aka- Busta Rhymes was born (1970);

• 21^st – Black students enrolled at Oberlin College for the first time (1833); Mr. T was born (1952); The Notorious B.I.G. was born (1972);

• 22^nd – Shuffle Along, a musical featuring a score by Eubie Blake and Noble Sissle, opened on Broadway (1921); news anchor Bernard Shaw was born (1940); Claude McKay succumbed (1948); Bill Cosby became the first Black to receive the Best Actor Emmy (1966); Langston Hughes succumbed (1967); Serena Williams' trading card became the highest-priced trading card of any female athlete (2022);

• 23^rd – Sgt. William H. Carney became the first Black to be awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for Valor (1900); Katie Booth was born (1907); Marvelous Marvin Hagler was born (1954); Moms Mabley succumbed (1975);

• 24^th – The first black college, Lincoln University (PA), was founded; (1854); Patti LaBelle was born (1944); Duke Ellington succumbed (1974); Jesse Jackson became the first Black to address a joint session of the United States Senate and House of Representatives (1983);

• 25^th - Bill “Bojangles” Robinson is born (1878); civil rights activist and organizer Lillie Mae Carroll Jackson born (1889); Dorothy Wesley, one of the first black women to earn a master’s in library science, born (1905); Madame C.J. Walker, cosmetics manufacturer, and first Black female millionaire, succumbed (1919); Miles Davis born (1926); Henry Ossawa Tanner, the first Black painter to gain international acclaim, succumbed (1937); Jamaica Kincaid was born (1949); Octavia Spencer was born (1970);

• 26^th - Aleksandr Puskin was born (1799); Pam Grier was born (1949); Marvin Cook was ambassador to the Niger Republic (1961); Freedom Ride Coordinating Committee was established (1961); Lauryn Hill was born (1975); Howard University renamed its College of Fine Arts after actor Chadwick Boseman (2021);

• 27^th – Ramsey Lewis was born (1935); Louis Gossett Jr. was born (1936); Ernest Green, of the Little Rock Nine, became the first Black graduate from Central High School (1958);

• 28^th - Eliza Ann Gardner was born (1831); Aaron “T-Bone” Walker was born (1910); Betty Shabazz was born (1934); Gladys Knight was born (1944); Bishop Vashti McKenzie, the first woman to be elected a bishop in AME church, was born (1947); National Party wins Whites-only election in South Africa and begins to institute the policy of apartheid (1948); Mary Lou Williams succumbed (1981); Gary Coleman succumbed (2010); Maya Angelou succumbed (2014);

• 29^th - Sojourner Truth delivered “Ain’t I A Woman?” speech (1851); Andrew Johnson announced his program of Reconstruction (1865); Granville T. Woods patented the overhead conducting system for the electric railway (1901); 1973 – Thomas Bradley was elected mayor of Los Angeles; Carmelo Anthony was born (1984);

• 30^th - Countee Cullen was born (1903); Gale Sayers, the youngest NFL player to be inducted to the Hall of Fame, was born (1943); Vivian Malone became the first Black graduate of the University of Alabama (1965); Dr. Patricia E. Bath succumbed (2019); and

• 31^st – Congress passes the first Enforcement Act, providing stiff penalties for those who deprived others of their civil rights (1870); National Negro Committee (now NAACP) held first conference (1909 ); Patricia Roberts Harris, the first Black woman to serve in a Presidential cabinet position, is born (1924); Judge Irving Kaufman ordered the board of education of New Rochelle to integrate schools (1961); Zimbabwe was proclaimed independent (1979)?

Do you know May Black History includes:

• 1^st - A commemoration organized by freed slaves and some white missionaries took place in Charleston, S.C., which is considered by some to be the first Memorial Day observance (1865); Howard University Chartered (1867); Max Robinson, the first Black national news anchor, was born (1939); Asa Philip Randolph issued 100,000 Blacks to march on Washington, D.C. to protest discrimination in the armed forces and war industries (1941); Gwendolyn Brooks made history as first Black to win a Pulitzer Prize (1950); Dr. Rameck R. Hunt was born (1973);

• 2^nd - Elijah McCoy born (1844); Indianapolis ABCs defeat Chicago Giants in first Negro National League Game (1920); Wilt Chamberlain became the first basketball player to score 100 points in a game (1962 ); more than a thousand students gathered at 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, AL, to march downtown (1963);

• 3^rd – Macon B. Allen became the first Black lawyer admitted to the Massachusetts Bar (1845); Septima Clark, educator and civil rights activist, known as “The Grandmother of the Civil Rights Movement,” was born (1898); Walter Smith Junior -aka- Sugar Ray Robinson was born (1921); Frederick O’Neal became the first Black president of the Actors’ Equity Association (1964);

• 4^th - Dr. Daniel Hale Williams founded the Provident Hospital and Training School (1891); CORE Freedom Riders began protesting segregation of interstate bus travel in the South (1961); Kimora Lee Simmons was born (1975); Dr. Neil de Grasse Tyson was appointed director of the Hayden Planetarium in New York City (1996);

• 5^th – Robert S. Abbott published the first issue of the Chicago Defender newspaper (1905); The Apollo Theater reopened for its 50th anniversary (1985); Eugene Marino became the first Black Roman Catholic Archbishop in the U.S. (1988);

• 6^th – First Black Masonic Price Hall Lodge founded in Boston (1787); Martin R. Delany was born (1812); Edward Clark was born (1926); Willie Mays was born (1931); Rubin “Hurricane” Carter was born (1937); Gabourey Sidibe was born (1983); The Smithsonian Institution approved the creation of the National African American Museum (1991);

• 7^th – William Penn began monthly meetings for Blacks advocating emancipation (1700); Mary Eliza Mahoney, the first Registered Black American nurse was born (1845); Joseph R. Winters patented the fire escape ladder (1878); Dr. John E.W. Thompson, a graduated from the Yale Medical School, was named Minister to Haiti (1885 ); The Liberty Ship George Washington Carver, named after the scientist, was launched (1943); Emma Clarissa Clement became the first Black woman to be named “American Mother of the Year” by the Golden Rule Foundation (1946); Raven Johnson became the first woman to play in the Allen Iverson Classic (2021);

• 8^th – M.A. Cherry received a patent for the tricycle (1888); Mary Lou Williams was born (1910); The Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, the trailblazing black labor union, was organized by A. Philip Randolph (1925); Sonny Liston was born (1932); Jackie Robinson became the first Black person to be featured on the cover of Life Magazine (1950); Carole Ann-Marie Gist, first Black woman crowned Miss USA, was born (1969); Lena Horne awarded the Springarm Medal (1983);

• 9^th - Ira Aldridge was born (1807); Martha Graham was born (1854); General Hunter of the Union Army issued a proclamation freeing the slaves of Georgia, Florida and South Carolina (1862); Vernell Lillie was born (1931); Little Richard succumbed (2020);

• 10^th – P.B.S. Pinchback was born (1837); The National Pan-Hellenic Council (NPHC) was formed (1930); Chuck Cooper became the first Black player drafted to the NBA (1950);

• 11^th – William Grant Still, the first Black to conduct a major American symphony orchestra, was born (1895); Louis Farrakhan was born (1933); Bob Marley succumbed (1981);

• 12^th – The New York Free School student population reached 500 (1820); segregated street cars integrated in Louisville, KY following sit-in staged by a Black teenager (1871); Al Jarreau was born (1940); Dorothy Tillman was born (1947); Oscar Stanton DePriest succumbed (1951); Ving Rhames was born (1959); Coretta Scott King led the first wave of demonstrators for the Poor People’s March (1968);

• 13^th – Matilda Arabella Evans, the first Black woman to practice medicine in South Carolina, was born (1872); Boxer Joe Louis is born (1914); Carolyn Robertson Payton, first Black Director of the U.S. Peace Corps, is born (1925); Stevie Wonder was born (1950); Darius Rucker was born (1966); James Charles Evers was elected to be the first African American mayor of a racially mixed town in Mississippi (969); Philadelphia’s MOVE headquarters was bombed (1985); Elton Fax succumbed (1993); Karine Jean-Pierre became the first Black White House press secretary (2022);

• 14^th – A race riot, or rather, an attack of white domestic terrorism befell Blacks in Mobile, AL., after a Black mass meeting (1867); Erskine Henderson, a Black jockey, won the Kentucky Derby on a horse trained by a Black trainer, Alex Perry (1885); Joseph “King” Oliver was born (1885); slavery was abolished in Brazil (1888); Clara Stanton Jones, the first Black president of the American Library Association, was born (1913); Arthur Ashe became the first Black to qualify for the U.S. Davis Cup team (1963); Jackson State earned national notoriety when two students, Philip Gibbs, a JSU junior, and James Green, a senior at Jim Hill High School, were killed by Jackson police when they opened fire on the campus during a student protest (1970); or

• 15^th - U.S. Congress declares foreign slave trade an act of piracy, punishable by death (1820); Rep. John Conyers was born (1929); Bennett Johnson was born (1929); Diane Nash was born (1938); Camilla Williams became the first Black woman to sign a contract with a major American opera company (1946); Emmitt Smith was born (1969)?

Do you know April Black History also includes:

• 15^th - A. Philip Randolph was (1889); Bessie Smith was born (1894); Elizabeth Catlett was born (1915); Norma Merrick Sklarek, one of the first licensed Black woman architects in the U.S., was born (1926); Major League Baseball officially refused to integrate (1945); Jackie Robinson becomes first Black major league baseball player (1947); Luther Vandross was born (1951); Sidney Poitier became the first Black to win an Academy Award for Best Actor for Lilies of the Field (1963);

• 16^th - Slavery abolished in the District of Columbia (1862); Kareem Abdul-Jabbar was born (1947); Martin Lawrence was born (1965); Ralph Ellison succumbed (1994);

• 17^th - Charlotte Brown was forced off a streetcar in San Francisco, highlighting the discrimination faced by Black Americans outside of the South (1863); Alice Walker made history as the first Black woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for The Color Purple (1983); Ralph Abernathy succumbed (1990);

• 18^th - New Jersey ordered Black servitude for life (1846); W.E.B. Du Bois publishes “The Souls of Black Folk” (1903);

• 19^th - Emancipation Day, the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia, was celebrated (1862); Major Gen. Frederic E. Davidson became the first Black to lead an army division (1972); Percy Julian succumbed (1975);

• 20^th - Dr. Lloyd A. Hall was born (1894);

• 21^st - Pct. Milton L. Olive III was awarded the Medal of Honor posthumously for valor in Vietnam (1966); Nina Simone succumbed (2003); Caucasian parents protested Georgia high school holding 1^st racially integrated prom (2007); Prince succumbed (2016);

• 22^nd - Charles Mingus was born (1922); U.S. Supreme Court ruled that racial bias is "inevitable" in the criminal justice system (1987);

• 23^rd - Granville T. Woods was born (1856); Clatonia Joaquin Dorticus patented photographic print wash (1895);

• 24^th - President Rutherford B. Hayes withdrew federal troops from Louisiana, ending Reconstruction (1877); United Negro College Fund was incorporated (1944);

• 25^th - Ella Fitzgerald, “First Lady of Song”, was born (1918); Charles “Chuck” Cooper made history as the first Black drafted by an NBA team (1950);

• 26^th - Ma Rainey was born (1886); Sarah Boone patented ironing board (1888); Count Basie succumbed (1984);

• 27^th - Vincent Porter became the first Black physician certified in plastic surgery (1968); Coretta Scott King was born (1927); August Wilson was born (1945);

• 28^th - Cinque led mutiny off the coast of Long Island, NY (1839);

• 29^th - Duke Ellington was born (1899); an all-white jury acquitted the officers who beat Rodney King (1992); or

• 30^th - Bessie Coleman succumbed (1926); Dr. Louis T. Wright was honored by American Cancer Society for his contributions to cancer research (1952); Muddy Waters succumbed (1983)?

Do you know April Black History includes:

• 1^st- Hampton Institute (aka Hampton University) founded (1868); Scott Joplin succumbed (1917); Dr. Charles R. Drew, MD succumbed (1950); Marvin Gaye succumbed (1984);

• 2^nd- Georgia ceded land to create the slave states of Alabama and Mississippi (1802); John Thompson became the first Black coach to win the NCAA basketball tournament (1984); Bill Pickett succumbed (1932); Marvin Gaye was born (1939); Elizabeth Catlett succumbed (2012);

• 3^rd- Poet-orator James Madison Bell, author of the Emancipation Day poem “The Day and the War”, was born (1826); President William Howard Taft expelled Black soldiers from San Antonio for protesting Jim Crow (1911); US Supreme Court declared that Blacks could not be barred from voting in the Texas Democratic primaries (1944); Carter G. Woodson succumbed (1950); Eddie Murphy was born (1961); Martin Luther King Jr. led a campaign against discrimination in Birmingham (1963); Sarah Vaughan succumbed (1990);

• 4^th- Muddy Waters was born (1913); Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated (1968); Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. succumbed (1972);

• 5^th- Booker T. Washington was born (1856); Maya Angelou was born (1928); Colin Powell was born (1937); Walter E. Massey was born (1938); Washington, D.C. Municipal Court of Appeals outlawed segregation in restaurants (1951); Marlon Riggs succumbed (1994);

• 6^th- Matthew A. Henson reached the North Pole, 45 minutes before Commandeer Peary (1909); Billy Dee Williams was born (1937);

• 7^th- Civil rights activist William Monroe Trotter was born (1862); Granville T. Woods patented the apparatus for transmission of messages by electricity (1885); Billie Holiday was born (1915); William Monroe Trotter succumbed (1934); U.S. Postal Service issues first stamp honoring African American bearing likeness of Booker T. Washington (1940); Tony Dorsett was born (1954);

• 8^th- Bob Johnson was born (1946); Hank Aaron hits 715 home runs, surpassing Babe Ruth as the game’s all-time home-run leader (1974); Marian Anderson succumbed (1993);

• 9^th- Paul Robeson was born (1898); renowned opera singer, Marian Anderson, performed for 75,000 outside Lincoln Memorial (1939); Juanita Hall made history as the first Black person to win a Tony award (1950);

• 10^th- The Civil Rights Act of 1968, which included the Fair Housing Act was signed into law (1968); Lee Elder made history as the first Black golfer to play in the Masters Tournament (1975);

• 11^th- Spelman College founded (1811); Percy Julian born (1899); President Woodrow Wilson authorized segregation within the federal government (1913); Emmett Ashford made history as the first Black major league umpire (1966); Carolyn Payton, the first Black director of the U.S. Peace Corps, succumbed (2001);

• 12^th- More than 200 Black Union troops massacred by Confederate forces at Ft. Pillow, TN (1864); Herbie Hancock was born (1940); Carter G. Woodson succumbed (1950); Bull Connor ordered the arrest of Civil Rights marchers in Birmingham (1963); Josephine Baker succumbed (1975); Joe Louis succumbed (1981); Veteran’s Hospital #91 opened in Tuskegee, AL to treat service-related respiratory and mental health issues of Black veterans (1923); Harold Washington became the first African American mayor of Chicago (1983); Sugar Ray Robinson succumbed (1989);

• 13^th- Al Green was born (1946);

• 14^th- First abolitionist society in U.S. was founded in Philadelphia (1775); or

• 15^th- A. Philip Randolph was (1889); Bessie Smith was born (1894); Elizabeth Catlett was born (1915); Norma Merrick Sklarek, one of the first licensed Black woman architects in the U.S., was born (1926); Major League Baseball officially refused to integrate (1945); Jackie Robinson becomes first Black major league baseball player (1947); Luther Vandross was born (1951); Sidney Poitier became the first Black to win an Academy Award for Best Actor for Lilies of the Field (1963)?