Half-Month, Inclusive History

January/Part II

Do you know January Black History also includes:

• 16^th – Hiram R. Revels, the first African-American elected to the United States Senate, succumbed (1901); Zeta Phi Beta sorority was founded on the campus of Howard University (1920); Debbie Allen was born (1950); The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals ordered Clemson College to admit Harvey Gantt opening the door for him to become the first African American to enroll at Clemson (1963); Aaliyah Dana Haughton was born (1979); a bronze bust of Martin Luther King, Jr., was the first of any black American in the halls of Congress (1986);

• 17^th – Paul Cuffee, the financier of the small group of Blacks who established a base in the West African nation of Sierra Leone in 1815, was born (1759); armed and racist Whites violently seized control of the Texas state government, bringing an end to Reconstruction and to post-Civil War Black rights and gains in the state (1874); Eartha Kitt was born (1927); James Earl Jones was born (1931); Muhammad Ali was born (1942); Barbara Jordan, the first African American elected to the Texas Senate, succumbed (1996);

• 18^th - Dr. Daniel Hale Williams born (1856); The Jeffersons premiered (1975); Willie O’Ree made history as the first Black professional hockey player (1981); the New York Stock Exchange closed, for the first time, in honor of the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1998);

• 19^th – Entrepreneur John H. Johnson was born (1918); Wilson Pickett succumbed (2006);

• 20^th – Negro Leagues baseball player Josh Gibson was born (1947); the first national Martin Luther King, Jr., holiday was celebrated (1986); Barack Obama was Inaugurated as the first Official Black and 44^th President of the U.S. (2009); Etta James succumbed (2012);

• 21^st – Barbara Jordan was born (1936); Former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder was born (1951);

• 22^nd – Singer Sam Cooke was born (1931);

• 23^rd – Author Richard Wright wins NAACP Spingarn Medal for “Native Son” (1941); the Twenty-fourth Amendment forbade the use of the poll tax to prevent voting (1964); Paul Robeson succumbed (1976);

• 24^th – Jackie Robinson was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame (1962); Thurgood Marshall succumbed (1993);

• 25^th – Sojourner Truth, born Isabella Baumfree, addressed the first Black Women’s Rights Convention (1851); Etta James was born (1939);

• 26^th – Bessie Coleman was born (1892); Angela Davis was born (1944); Anita Baker was born (1958);

• 27^th – Ralph Ellison’s “Invisible Man” won the National Book Award (1952); Leontyne Price debuted; at the Metropolitan Opera House (1961); Mahalia Jackson succumbed (1972); Black History Month observations began in the Netherlands as Black Achievement Month (2016);

• 28^th – The Free African Society was founded (1787); Zora Neale Hurston succumbed away (1960); Astronaut Dr. Ronald E. McNair succumbed as part of the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger (1986);

• 29^th – Black Americans celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation (1913); Oprah Winfrey was born (1954); Barbara Harris was elected the first woman bishop of the Episcopal Church (1989);

• 30^th – The home of Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was bombed (1956); Coretta Scott King succumbed (2006); and

• 31^st – The Friendship Nine/Students from Friendship Junior College and others went to jail after a sit-in at a segregated lunch counter in Rock Hill, SC (1961); James Baldwin’s, The Fire Next Time, was published (1963); Doug Williams, the first Black quarterback to play in the Super Bowl, was named MVP in Super Bowl XXII (1988)?