Half-Month, Inclusive History
May/Part I
Do you know May Black History includes:
1st - A commemoration organized by freed slaves and some white missionaries took place in Charleston, S.C., which is considered by some to be the first Memorial Day observance (1865); Howard University Chartered (1867); Max Robinson, the first Black national news anchor, was born (1939); Asa Philip Randolph issued 100,000 Blacks to march on Washington, D.C. to protest discrimination in the armed forces and war industries (1941); Gwendolyn Brooks made history as first Black to win a Pulitzer Prize (1950); Dr. Rameck R. Hunt was born (1973);
2nd - Elijah McCoy born (1844); Indianapolis ABCs defeat Chicago Giants in first Negro National League Game (1920); Wilt Chamberlain became the first basketball player to score 100 points in a game (1962 ); more than a thousand students gathered at 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, AL, to march downtown (1963);
3rd – Macon B. Allen became the first Black lawyer admitted to the Massachusetts Bar (1845); Septima Clark, educator and civil rights activist, known as “The Grandmother of the Civil Rights Movement,” was born (1898); Walter Smith Junior -aka- Sugar Ray Robinson was born (1921); Frederick O’Neal became the first Black president of the Actors’ Equity Association (1964);
4th - Dr. Daniel Hale Williams founded the Provident Hospital and Training School (1891); CORE Freedom Riders began protesting segregation of interstate bus travel in the South (1961); Kimora Lee Simmons was born (1975); Dr. Neil de Grasse Tyson was appointed director of the Hayden Planetarium in New York City (1996);
5th – Robert S. Abbott published the first issue of the Chicago Defender newspaper (1905); The Apollo Theater reopened for its 50th anniversary (1985); Eugene Marino became the first Black Roman Catholic Archbishop in the U.S. (1988);
6th – First Black Masonic Price Hall Lodge founded in Boston (1787); Martin R. Delany was born (1812); Edward Clark was born (1926); Willie Mays was born (1931); Rubin “Hurricane” Carter was born (1937); Gabourey Sidibe was born (1983); The Smithsonian Institution approved the creation of the National African American Museum (1991);
7th – William Penn began monthly meetings for Blacks advocating emancipation (1700); Mary Eliza Mahoney, the first Registered Black American nurse was born (1845); Joseph R. Winters patented the fire escape ladder (1878); Dr. John E.W. Thompson, a graduated from the Yale Medical School, was named Minister to Haiti (1885 ); The Liberty Ship George Washington Carver, named after the scientist, was launched (1943); Emma Clarissa Clement became the first Black woman to be named “American Mother of the Year” by the Golden Rule Foundation (1946); Raven Johnson became the first woman to play in the Allen Iverson Classic (2021);
8th – M.A. Cherry received a patent for the tricycle (1888); Mary Lou Williams was born (1910); The Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, the trailblazing black labor union, was organized by A. Philip Randolph (1925); Sonny Liston was born (1932); Jackie Robinson became the first Black person to be featured on the cover of Life Magazine (1950); Carole Ann-Marie Gist, first Black woman crowned Miss USA, was born (1969); Lena Horne awarded the Springarm Medal (1983);
9th - Ira Aldridge was born (1807); Martha Graham was born (1854); General Hunter of the Union Army issued a proclamation freeing the slaves of Georgia, Florida and South Carolina (1862); Vernell Lillie was born (1931); Little Richard succumbed (2020);
10th – P.B.S. Pinchback was born (1837); The National Pan-Hellenic Council (NPHC) was formed (1930); Chuck Cooper became the first Black player drafted to the NBA (1950);
11th – William Grant Still, the first Black to conduct a major American symphony orchestra, was born (1895); Louis Farrakhan was born (1933); Bob Marley succumbed (1981);
12th – The New York Free School student population reached 500 (1820); segregated street cars integrated in Louisville, KY following sit-in staged by a Black teenager (1871); Al Jarreau was born (1940); Dorothy Tillman was born (1947); Oscar Stanton DePriest succumbed (1951); Ving Rhames was born (1959); Coretta Scott King led the first wave of demonstrators for the Poor People’s March (1968);
13th – Matilda Arabella Evans, the first Black woman to practice medicine in South Carolina, was born (1872); Boxer Joe Louis is born (1914); Carolyn Robertson Payton, first Black Director of the U.S. Peace Corps, is born (1925); Stevie Wonder was born (1950); Darius Rucker was born (1966); James Charles Evers was elected to be the first African American mayor of a racially mixed town in Mississippi (969); Philadelphia’s MOVE headquarters was bombed (1985); Elton Fax succumbed (1993); Karine Jean-Pierre became the first Black White House press secretary (2022);
14th – A race riot, or rather, an attack of white domestic terrorism befell Blacks in Mobile, AL., after a Black mass meeting (1867); Erskine Henderson, a Black jockey, won the Kentucky Derby on a horse trained by a Black trainer, Alex Perry (1885); Joseph “King” Oliver was born (1885); slavery was abolished in Brazil (1888); Clara Stanton Jones, the first Black president of the American Library Association, was born (1913); Arthur Ashe became the first Black to qualify for the U.S. Davis Cup team (1963); Jackson State earned national notoriety when two students, Philip Gibbs, a JSU junior, and James Green, a senior at Jim Hill High School, were killed by Jackson police when they opened fire on the campus during a student protest (1970); or
15th - U.S. Congress declares foreign slave trade an act of piracy, punishable by death (1820); Rep. John Conyers was born (1929); Bennett Johnson was born (1929); Diane Nash was born (1938); Camilla Williams became the first Black woman to sign a contract with a major American opera company (1946); Emmitt Smith was born (1969)?
