Half-Month, Inclusive History
August/Part I
Do you know that August Black History includes:
1st - Slavery abolished in all British territories (1834); slavery abolished in Jamaica (1838) Blacks voted for the first time in the state of Tennessee (1867); St. Augustine’s University, the Black private liberal arts college founded (1867) Augustus Nathaniel Lushington, the first Black American Doctor of Veterinary Medicine was born (1869); Charles Clinton Spaulding was born (1874); Mary Eliza Mahoney became the first Black grade from a nursing school when she graduated from New England Hospital for Women and Children nursing program (1879); Joseph Hayne Rainey, the first Black person to serve in the House of Representatives and the second Black person to serve in Congress, succumbed (1887); Henrietta Lacks was born (1920); The National Bar Association was formed (1925); Geoffry Holder was born (1930); Benjamin E. Mays named president of Morehouse College (1936); Harlem Race Riot occurred (1943); Adam Clayton Powell became the first Black elected to congress (1944); Carlton Douglas ‘Chuck D’ Ridenhour was born (1960); Dahomey proclaimed independent (1960); Whitney Young, Jr., named Executive Director of the National Urban League (1961); Coolio was born (1963); Arthur Ashe became the first Black man to play for the US Davis Cup team (1964); James Patterson Lyke was installed as Auxiliary Bishop of the Cleveland Diocese of the Roman Catholic Church (1979); Barbara Ross-Lee became the first Black woman to head a medical school after assuming the Dean of Ohio University College of Osteopathic Medicine role (1993); Ron Brown appointed head of the Department of Commerce (1993);
1st – 2nd - The national convention of the Universal Negro Improvement Society occurred (1920);
2nd – A delegation of 50 met to demand that Blacks in VA be granted legal title to land occupied during the Civil War (1865); George Washington Williams, the first person to write an objective and scientifically researched history of Black people in the United States, succumbed (1891); James A. Baldwin was born (1924); Chokwe Lumumba, an early leader of the black separatist organization Republic of New Afrika was born (1947); The Charles R. Drew Post Graduate Medical School (now known as Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science) received its charter (1966); Thomas ‘Hit Man’ Hearns wins the WBA welterweight title (1980);
3rd – Lloyd Ray patented the dustpan (1897); The Atlanta Daily World began publication as the first Black daily newspaper (1928); Niger proclaimed independence (1960); Jackie Joyner-Kersee became the first woman to repeat as Olympic heptathlon champion (1992);
4th – Louis ‘Satchmo’ Armstrong was born (1901); principal founder of Chicago’s Provident Hospital and the physician who performed the first successful open-heart surgery, Dr. Daniel Hale Williams succumbed (1931); Debbie Sims Africa was born (1956); Barack Obama was born (1961); civil rights workers, James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner found dead on a farm near Philadelphia, MS (1964); Thomas Sankara was named president of Burkina Faso (1983);
5th - Bill ‘The Black Terro’ Richmond, the first Black boxer to gain international recognition, was born (1763); Andrew Johnson reversed Special Field Order #15, which granted land abandoned or confiscated from slave-owning whites to former slaves (1865); Upper Volta proclaimed independent (1960); Nelson Mandela arrested and imprisoned (1962); William “Bill” Pinkney became the first Black American and the fourth person in the world to circumnavigate the globe alone by boat (1990); the first Black woman general in the US Army, Hazel Johnson-Brown succumbed (2011); the Montgomery Riverfront Brawl/the Montgomery Riverfront Beatdown occurred (2023); Kamala Harris became the first Black woman to secure a major party's nomination for President of the United States (2024);
6th- Jamaica achieved independence (1962); The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was signed into law by Lyndon B. Johnson (1965); David Robinson was born (1965); Bayard Rustin succumbed (1987);
7th – Ralph J. Bunche, the first Black winner of the Nobel Prize, was born (1904); Alice Coachman, becomes the first African American woman to win an Olympic gold medal (1948); the Senate confirmed Charles Henry Mahoney as the first Black to serve as a full delegate to the United Nations (1954); Jonathan P. Jackson succumbed (1970); The shootout at San Rafael occurred, Angela Davis was implicated and went into hiding (1970); Kenneth Gibson became the first Black mayor of an Eastern city when he assumed post in Newark, NJ (1970);
7th – 8th – A large-scale race riot occurred in Lansing, MI (1966); the first Black actor to achieve international success, Ira Frederick Aldridge, succumbed (1967);
8th – Matthew Henson, was born (1866); Ivory Coast proclaimed independent (1960);
9th – Jesse Owns won four gold medals at the Berlin Summer Olympics (1936); James Benton Parsons becomes the first Black as the United States District Court Judge for Northern Illinois (1961); Whitney Houston was born (1963); Gregory Hines succumbed (2003); Bernie Mac succumbed (2008); Mike Brown succumbed (2014);
10th - James Conway Farley, the first Black American to achieve prominence in the photography industry, was born (1854); Shirley Chisholm became the first Black woman elected to Congress (1970); Isaac Hayes succumbed (2008);
11th – Frederick Douglass spoke before an audience during an anti-slavery convention on Nantucket Island (1841); Alex Haley was born (1921); DJ Kool Herc birthed Hip-Hop when he hosted a party in the Bronx (1973); Anthony Phills received US patent #5136787 for a ruler template for a computer (1992);
11th – 16th – Chad proclaimed independence; (1960); Watts Riot/Watts Uprising occurred (1965);
12th – Gladys Bentley was born (1907); Fredrick Douglass’ Washington, DC home declared a national shrine (1922); Ophelia DeVore-Mitchell was born (1923); Hugo Pinell was involved in the attempted prison break to liberate George Jackson (1971);
13th – Spelman College opened the first Black nursing school (1881); Eva Dykes, the first Black woman to earn a doctoral degree, was born (1893); James B. Parsons, the first Black to serve as a judge in US District Court was born (1911); the red, black and green Pan-African flag formally adopted by The Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League (1920); Kathleen Battle was born (1948);
13th – 14th – The Brownsville Affair/The Brownsville Raid occurred when white residents accused the Black soldiers of the 25th US Infantry Regiment of shooting a white bartender and wounding a white police officer (1906); Fidel Castro was born (1927);
14th Bois Caiman the Voudou Ceremony that led to the first large scale uprising of the enslaved in Saint Domingue occurred (1791); Ethel Payne, the first Black woman radio and tv commentator at a national news organization, was born (1911); Teddy Roosevelt signed the Social Security Act and established the guaranteed pension system for workers to retire at age 65 (1935); Earvin ’Magic’ Johnson was born (1959); Halle Berry was born (1966); Prairie View State University founded (1976); and
15th – Oscar Peterson was born (1925); Congo Brazzaville proclaimed independent (1960); Horace Julian Bond succumbed (2015)?
