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:
16th - 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);
17th – Capital Savings Bank of Washington, D.C., was organized (1888); Mae Jemison was born (1956); Congressman Elijah Cummings succumbed (2019);
18th - 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);
20th - 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);
21st – 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);
22nd - Clarence S. Green became the first board-certified Black neurological surgeon (1953);
23rd - The National Urban League (1911); the NAACP petitioned the United States on racial conditions in the U.S. (1947);
24th - 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);
25th - 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);
26th – 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);
27th – 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);
28th - 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);
29th - 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;
30th – 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
31st – 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)?
I did not know this! Ty...