Half-Month, Inclusive History

April/Part I

Do you know April Black History includes:

• 1^st- Hampton Institute (aka Hampton University) founded (1868); Scott Joplin succumbed (1917); Dr. Charles R. Drew, MD succumbed (1950); Marvin Gaye succumbed (1984);

• 2^nd- Georgia ceded land to create the slave states of Alabama and Mississippi (1802); John Thompson became the first Black coach to win the NCAA basketball tournament (1984); Bill Pickett succumbed (1932); Marvin Gaye was born (1939); Elizabeth Catlett succumbed (2012);

• 3^rd- Poet-orator James Madison Bell, author of the Emancipation Day poem “The Day and the War”, was born (1826); President William Howard Taft expelled Black soldiers from San Antonio for protesting Jim Crow (1911); US Supreme Court declared that Blacks could not be barred from voting in the Texas Democratic primaries (1944); Carter G. Woodson succumbed (1950); Eddie Murphy was born (1961); Martin Luther King Jr. led a campaign against discrimination in Birmingham (1963); Sarah Vaughan succumbed (1990);

• 4^th- Muddy Waters was born (1913); Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated (1968); Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. succumbed (1972);

• 5^th- Booker T. Washington was born (1856); Maya Angelou was born (1928); Colin Powell was born (1937); Walter E. Massey was born (1938); Washington, D.C. Municipal Court of Appeals outlawed segregation in restaurants (1951); Marlon Riggs succumbed (1994);

• 6^th- Matthew A. Henson reached the North Pole, 45 minutes before Commandeer Peary (1909); Billy Dee Williams was born (1937);

• 7^th- Civil rights activist William Monroe Trotter was born (1862); Granville T. Woods patented the apparatus for transmission of messages by electricity (1885); Billie Holiday was born (1915); William Monroe Trotter succumbed (1934); U.S. Postal Service issues first stamp honoring African American bearing likeness of Booker T. Washington (1940); Tony Dorsett was born (1954);

• 8^th- Bob Johnson was born (1946); Hank Aaron hits 715 home runs, surpassing Babe Ruth as the game’s all-time home-run leader (1974); Marian Anderson succumbed (1993);

• 9^th- Paul Robeson was born (1898); renowned opera singer, Marian Anderson, performed for 75,000 outside Lincoln Memorial (1939); Juanita Hall made history as the first Black person to win a Tony award (1950);

• 10^th- The Civil Rights Act of 1968, which included the Fair Housing Act was signed into law (1968); Lee Elder made history as the first Black golfer to play in the Masters Tournament (1975);

• 11^th- Spelman College founded (1811); Percy Julian born (1899); President Woodrow Wilson authorized segregation within the federal government (1913); Emmett Ashford made history as the first Black major league umpire (1966); Carolyn Payton, the first Black director of the U.S. Peace Corps, succumbed (2001);

• 12^th- More than 200 Black Union troops massacred by Confederate forces at Ft. Pillow, TN (1864); Herbie Hancock was born (1940); Carter G. Woodson succumbed (1950); Bull Connor ordered the arrest of Civil Rights marchers in Birmingham (1963); Josephine Baker succumbed (1975); Joe Louis succumbed (1981); Veteran’s Hospital #91 opened in Tuskegee, AL to treat service-related respiratory and mental health issues of Black veterans (1923); Harold Washington became the first African American mayor of Chicago (1983); Sugar Ray Robinson succumbed (1989);

• 13^th- Al Green was born (1946);

• 14^th- First abolitionist society in U.S. was founded in Philadelphia (1775); or

• 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)?