Half-Month, Inclusive History

April/Part II

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)?