Half-Month, Inclusive History

March/Part I

Do you know March Black History includes:

• 1^st – Anna M. Mangin invents the pastry fork (1892); Ralph Ellison born (1914); Idaho broadens ban on interracial marriage (1921); Harry Belafonte born (1927); Joe Louis retired from boxing (1949); Leonard S. Coleman, Jr. elected president of the National Baseball League (1994);

• 2^nd – U.S. Congress enacts charter to establish Howard University (1867); Wilt Chamberlain scored 100 points in a single basketball game (1962); Dr. Jerome H. Holland becomes first Black person to serve on the board of the NY Stock Exchange (1972);

• 3^rd – Freeman’s Bureau established by the federal government to aid newly freed slaves (1865); Jackie “Moms” Mabley born (1894); Jackie Joyner-Kersee born (1962);

• 4^th – Ida Gray Nelson Rollins, first Black woman dentist born (1867); Garrett A. Morgan born (1877); Miriam Makeba born (1932); Bill Russell honored as NBA most valuable player for the fourth time in five years (1965);

• 5^th – Crispus Attucks becomes one of the first casualties of the American Revolution (1770); Fred Williamson born (1938); U.S. Postal Service issues Mary McLeod Bethune commemorative stamp (1985);

• 6^th - U.S. Supreme Court issues Dred Scott decision (1857); Maurice Ashley, first Black chess grandmaster, born (1966); Zoë Dusanne succumbs (1972);

• 7^th - First Black cadets from the Tuskegee Flying School graduate (1942); Franco Harris born (1950); U.S. Supreme Court upholds key provisions of the Voting Rights Act (1965); Wanda Sykes born (1964); March from Selma to Montgomery, AL begins (1965); Bloody Sunday: Civil Rights activists brutally attacked in Selma, AL (1965);

• 8^th – Dr. Alexander Thomas Augusta, first Black med school faculty member born (1825); Phyllis Mae Dailey becomes first Black person to swear in as a Navy Nurse (1945); Henry L. Marsh III becomes first African American elected mayor of Richmond, VA (1977);

• 9^th – Amistad mutineers freed by U.S. Supreme Court (1841); Oscar De Priest born (1871); Dr. Rebecca Davis Lee Crumpler, first Black woman physician, succumbed (1895); Matthew Henson succumbs (1955);

• 10^th – Harriet Tubman succumbs (1913);

• 11^th – Ralph David Abernathy born (1926); Dr. Reginald Weir becomes the first Black player to compete in the U.S. Indoor Lawn Tennis Association Championship (1948); “A Raisin In the Sun” opens at Barrymore Theater, the first play by a Black woman to premiere on Broadway (1959);

• 12^th – Andrew Young born (1932); 19 Senators and 82 Representatives sign Southern Manifesto opposing school integration (1956); Virginia Hamilton born (1934); Charlie Parker succumbs (1955);

• 13^th – Jean Baptiste Pointe Du Sable, black pioneer and explorer, founded Chicago, IL (1773); Thomas L. Jennings was credited as the first Black person to patent an invention (1821); Louisville police lynch Breonna Taylor during nighttime No-Knock raid (2020);

• 14^th – Legislation passed requiring free Black people to apply for a license to remain in Missouri; (1835); Quincy Jones born (1933); Kirby Puckett born (1960); Montgomery Bus Boycott ends (1965); Fannie Lou Hamer succumbs (1977); or

• 15^th – Rebecca Cole, second Black female physician in America, born (1846); Max Yergan receives NAACP Spingarn Medal (1933); Lester Willis Young succumbs (1959); Eugene Antonio Marino, first Black archbishop, assigned to Atlanta (1988)?