Do you know that October marks Black History Month in Ireland, the United Kingdom, and the Netherlands?
Or that October Black History includes:
Negro Musicians’ Union, Local 493 -aka- Negro Musicians’ Union, Local No. 493 was formed in Seattle, WA (1913);
The US Navy began admitting Black women via the WAVES (Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service) program (1944);
Ralph Bunche became the first Black man to receive the Nobel Peace Prize (1950);
Colin Powell began serving as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (1989);
Dr. Belinda Miles became the first Black American and first female President of Westchester Community College (2015);
Barack Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize (2009);
Simone Biles won her 5th winning her 5th consecutive all-around world gymnastic title and her 25th world medal (2019);
Bubba Wallace won the NASCAR Cup Series race and became the first Black driver to win since 1963 (2021)?
And that it also includes explicitly:
1st – The Spingarn Medal was awarded to NAACP secretary Walter White for his role as an advocate in the anti-lynching movement (1937); Dr. Charles Drew was named supervisor of the “Plasma for Great Britain” project (1940); Joseph ‘Joe’ Black became the first Black pitcher to win a World Series game (1952); Nigeria declared independent (1960);
2nd - Nat Turner was born (1800); Thurgood Marshall sworn in as the first Black Supreme Court Justice (1967); Robert H. Lawrence, the named first Black Astronaut, succumbed in a plane crash before his mission (1967); Edward J. Perkins was appointed Ambassador to South Africa (1986); August Wilson succumbed (2005);
3rd - Mary McLeod Bethune opened the Daytona Normal and Industrial School in Daytona Beach (1904 ); Jesse B. Blayton, Sr. became the first Black radio station owner/ operator in the US when he purchased WERD (1949); Henrietta Lacks passed away from cervical cancer after treatment at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, MD (1951); Nat King Cole became the first Black performer to host his own TV show (1956); Frank Robinson was named the first Black manager in Major League Baseball (1974); O.J. Simpson was acquitted (1995);
4th - The first Black daily newspaper, The New Orleans Tribune, was founded (1864); H. Rap Brown -fka- Hubert Gerold Brown -aka- Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin was born (1943); Howard Lee elected first Black mayor of Chapel Hill, NC (1969); Charles Evers became the first Black mayor of Fayette, MS (1969); The Martin L. King, Jr. Federal Building in Atlanta, GA, is the first federal building in the US dedicated to his name (1988); Congress passes a bill authorizing the creation of 500,000 Black Revolutionary War Patriots Commemorative coin (1996); Krista Mann became the first Black female Lieutenant of the Mount Vernon Police Department (2019);
5th – Monroe Baker because the first Black mayor of any American city when he took office in St, Martin, LA (1967); Booker T. Washington entered Hampton Institute (1872);
6th - Jack Trice, the first Black athlete at Iowa State, was assaulted by players from the University of Minnesota in a racially motivated attack (1838); the first National Black Convention took place in Troy, N.Y (1847); The Fisk Jubilee Singers of Fisk University began their first national singing tour (1871); Fannie Lou Hamer was born (1917); the first legal interracial marriage in the US took place in NC when John Wilkinson and Lorraine Mary Turner wed (1971);
7th – William Sill is born (1821); The honorable Elijah Muhammad was born (1897); Archbishop Desmond Mpilo Tutu was born (1931); Amiri Baraka -aka- LeRoi Jones was born (1934); Alabama Troopers attacked Black citizens registering to vote in Selma, AL (1963); Carl Stokes is elected the first Black mayor of a major American city, Cleveland, OH (1967); Toni Morrison was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in Literature (1993);
8th – The Council of Officers officially barred enslaved and free Blacks from joining the Continental Army (1775); Jack Trice died from hemorrhaged lungs and internal bleeding resulting from injuries sustained during the Iowa State vs. University of Minnesota assault (1923); Jesse Jackson was born (1941); Jackie Robinson was banned from playing interracial baseball in Alabama (1953);
9th - Benjamin Banneker succumbed (1806); O.B. Clare received the patent for the trestle (1888); Mary Ann Shadd, the first Black woman publisher in North America, was born (1823); Uganda gained independence (1962); W. Wilson Goode became the first Black mayor of Philadelphia, PA (1984);
10th – The African Free School opened (1788); the first exclusively Black parish in the United States, Saint Francis Xavier Church in Baltimore, MD, was purchased (1863); Isaac R. Robinson received the patent for the bicycle frame (1899); Frederick Douglass Patterson, founder of the United Negro College Fund, was born (1901); James Melvin “Jimmie” Lunceford was born (1902); Theolonius Monk was born (1917); David N. Dinkins was born (1927); Quincy Jones was born (1933); Porgy and Bess premiered (1935); Ben Vereen was born (1946); James ‘Sylvester’ Sylvester was born (1947); Otis M. Smith was appointed to the Michigan Supreme Court (1961); Black Panther Party was founded (1966); Ralph H. Metcalfe succumbed (1978); Mya was born (1979);
11th - Alexander Miles received the patent for improved methods for opening and closing electric elevator doors and shafts (1887); Granville T. Woods received the patent for the telephone system and apparatus (1887);
12th - W. Montague Cobb was born (1904); Dick Gregory was born (1932);
13th - Martin de Porres, the first Black saint in the Roman Catholic Church, was born (1579); Jerry Rice was born (1962);
14th - Ellen Richie, John Templeton, John Moore, and Stanley Cuthbert were criminally charged for teaching Black people how to read (1834); Garrett T. Morgan received the patent for the gas mask (1914); Marcus Mosiah Garvey was shot and wounded in an assassination attempt (1920); Washington, D.C. Bar Association voted to accept Black members (1958); Martin Luther King, Jr became the youngest man ever to win the Nobel Peace Prize (1964); or
15th – The US Supreme Court struck down the down Civil Rights Act of 1875 and legitimized segregation (1883); Fela Kuti, the pioneer of Afrobeat, was born (1938); William Hastie was nominated for the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals (1949); Wyomia Tyus became the first woman to win a gold medal in the 100-meter race in two consecutive Olympic games (1968); Clarence Thomas was confirmed as an Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, and became the second Black American to serve on the court (1991)?
As of 2025, Justice Thomas is still on the bench...