Half-Month, Inclusive History
July/Part I
Do you know that July 4th used to be a protest holiday for enslaved Americans, and that July Black History includes:
1st – 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);
2nd - 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);
3rd - 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);
4th - 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);
5th - 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);
6th - 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);
7th - Leroy Robert “Satchel” Paige was born (1906); Lisa Leslie was born (1972);
8th - 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);
9th - 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);
10th - 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);
11th - Mifflin Wistar Gibbs, publisher of the first Black newspaper in California, succumbed (1915); Mattiwilda Dobbs was born (1925);
11th – 14th - The Niagara Movement was founded by W.E.B. Du Bois and William Monroe Trotter (1905);
12th - 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);
14th - 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
15th - Forest Whitaker was born (1961); James H. McGhee was sworn in as Dayton, OH’s first Black mayor (1970)?
That’s a lot of research!
One powerful list.