Do you know April Black History includes:
1st- Hampton Institute (aka Hampton University) founded (1868); Scott Joplin succumbed (1917); Dr. Charles R. Drew, MD succumbed (1950); Marvin Gaye succumbed (1984);
2nd- 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);
3rd- 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);
4th- Muddy Waters was born (1913); Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated (1968); Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. succumbed (1972);
5th- 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);
6th- Matthew A. Henson reached the North Pole, 45 minutes before Commandeer Peary (1909); Billy Dee Williams was born (1937);
7th- 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);
8th- 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);
9th- 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);
10th- 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);
11th- 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);
12th- 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);
13th- Al Green was born (1946);
14th- First abolitionist society in U.S. was founded in Philadelphia (1775); or
15th- 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)?
Awesomeness! This is fantastic American history!!!!
Keep the black history coming as it archives our story away from the white supremacists. I’m an alumni of the former Hampton Institute where even my fellow history majors only got the basics of black history. In these times, HBCUs need to step up and enhance history departments, if they still have them.😢