November marks the following significant events in US Black History:
1867: Freedmen in Virginia registered to vote for the first time.
1922: The Harlem Renaissance began.
1935: Two Black teenagers were lynched by a mob of 700 white people in Colorado County, TX.
1957: Texas officials threatened and jailed NAACP officers for not disclosing their membership.
However, do you know that November Black History also includes:
1st – The first free school, the African Free School, opened (1787); Mississippi approved the use of literacy and understanding test to disenfranchise Black citizens (1890); C.W. Allen received the patent for the self-levelling table (1898); W.E.B. Du Bois began publishing the NAACP’s Crisis Magazine (1910); Florene Mills succumbed (1927); John H. Johnson published the 1st issue of The Negro Digest (1942); John H. Johnson published the 1st issue of Ebony Magazine (1945); Dr. Charles S. Johnson became the first Black president of Fisk University (1946); John H. Johnson founded Jet Magazine (1951); Clarence Thomas was formally seated as the 106th Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court (1991); South Africans voted in their first all-race local government elections, completing the destruction of the apartheid system (1995); Stanford University introduced its African American History Couse concentrating on the Modern Freedom Struggle (2007);
2nd - Menelik II, the former emperor of Ethiopia, was crowned King of Kings of Abyssinia, Ethiopia (1889); Haile Selassie was crowned Emperor of Ethiopia (1930); Charles C. Diggs was elected Michigan’s first Black congressman (1954); Condoleezza Rice was born (1954); Nelly was born (1974); President Ronald Reagan officially signed the law declaring the third Monday in January as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day (1983); Carol Mosely Braun became the first Black woman elected to the U.S. Senate (1992);
3rd - John W. Menard made history as the first Black person elected to Congress (1868); John Baxter Taylor, the 1st Black American Olympic Gold Medalist, was born (1882); J.H. Hunter received the patent for the portable weighing scale (1896); Paul Robeson was presented with the Spingarn Medal (1945); Larry Holmes was born (1949); John Conyers Jr. was elected to the House of Representatives (1964); Thirman L. Milner was elected mayor of Hartford, CT, and became the first Black mayor in New England (1981); Jesse Jackson announced his candidacy for President (1983);
4th - Cathay Williams, the only known female Buffalo Soldier, was born (1844 ); Thomas Elkins received the patent for the refrigeration apparatus (1879); Patricia Bath was born (1942); Hulan Jack was elected borough president of Manhattan and became the highest ranking Black municipal official at the time (1954); Sean Combs was born (1969); Zina Garrison became the first Black to win the Junior Singles Tennis Championship at Wimbledon (1981); President-elect Barack Obama delivered his historic victory speech (2008);
5th - Theo Wright became the first Black American to receive a Theology Degree (1836); Ike Turner born (1931); the Maryland Court of Appeals ordered the University of Maryland to admit Donald Murray (1935); Art Tatum succumbed (1956) Shirley Chisolm became the first Black woman elected to Congress (1968); Walter E. Washington became the first elected Washington, DC Mayor since Reconstruction (1974); George Brown (CO) and Mervyn Dymally (CA) were elected lieutenant governors respectively, becoming the first two Blacks in the nation to hold the position (1974); Damon J. Keith received the Springarn Medal (1974); The governor of Arizona officially refused to acknowledge Dr. King Day as a national holiday (1986); Shirley Verret succumbed (2010); Jonathan Scott Holloway was inaugurated as the first Black president of Rutgers University (2021);
6th - George Poage was born (1880); James Weldon Johnson and J. Rosamond Johnson composed “Lift Every Voice and Sing”, widely regarded as the Black national anthem (1900); W.E.B. Du Bois was awarded the Spingarn Medal (1920); W.A. Scott Jr. founded the Atlanta Daily World newspaper (1928); Sharon Pratt Kelly became the first woman mayor of Washington, D.
C. (1990);7th - Meharry Medical College was founded at Central Tennessee College (1876); Arthur L. Mitchell defeated Oscar DePriest in Chicago to become the first Black Democratic congressman (1934); L. Douglas Wilder was elected governor of VA, and became the nation’s first Black governor since the Reconstruction (1989); David Dinkins became the first Black mayor of New York City (1989); Jimi Hendrix inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (1991);
8th – The racially motivated Wilmington Massacre, occurred in Wilmington, NC (1898); Ester Rolle was born (1933); Crystal Bird Faucet was elected state representative in PA and became the first Black woman to serve in a state legislature (1938); Alfre Woodard was born (1953); John H. Johnson was awarded the Spingarn Medal (1966); Edward W. Brooke was elected the first Black U.S. senator since Reconstruction (1966);
9th – Benjamin Banneker was born (1731); Howard University Medical School opened (1868); Powell Clayton called out the Arkansas State Militia and declared martial law in 10 counties in a bid to put down a Ku Klux Klan-led insurrection (1868); William Monroe Trotter founded The Guardian newspaper in Boston, MA (1901); Dorothy Dandridge (1922); Mattiwilda Dobbs became the first Black person to sing a romantic lead at the Metropolitan Opera (1956); Sisqo was born (1975);
10th - Granville T. Woods received the patent for the electric railway (1891); George H. White introduced the first anti-lynching legislation in the U.S. Congress (1898); Charlie Sifford won the Long Beach Open and became the first Black to win a major professional golf tournament (1957); Andrew T. Hatcher was named associate press secretary by President John F. Kennedy, and became the first Black person to hold the position (1960); Wilson Goode was elected and became Philadelphia’s first Black mayor (1983); Carmen McRae succumbed (1994);
11th - Nat Turner is executed after leading a slave revolt in Southampton County, VA, and white mobs killed many other Blacks in response to his revolt against slavery (1831); George R. Carruthers received the patent for the image converter for detecting electromagnetic radiation (1969); Angola proclaimed its independence (1975); The Civil Rights Memorial was dedicated in Montgomery, AL (1989);
12th - General George Washington issued an order barring free Blacks from serving in the army (1775); Henry Ossawa Tanner won the silver medal at the Paris Exposition (1900); Sigma Gamma Rho, Sorority Inc. was founded by Mary Lou Allison Gardner Little, Dorothy Hanley Whiteside, Vivian Irene White Marbury, Nannie Mae Gahn Johnson, Hattie Mae Annette Dulin Redford, Bessie Mae Downey Rhoades Martin, and Cubena McClure (1922); Madame Lillian Evanti founded the National Negro Opera Company (1941); Ernest Nathan Morial made history as the first elected Black Mayor of New Orleans, LA (1977); Alex Haley awarded the Spingarn Medal (1977); Wilma Rudolph succumbed (1994);
13th - The Liberty Party, the nation’s first anti-slavery political party, was formed in Warsaw, N.Y. (1839); Albert C. Richardson received the patent for the casket-lowering device (1894); Dr. Daniel Hale Williams became the first Black elected to the American College of Surgeons (1913); the Harlem Renaissance began (1922); Janet Collins became the first Black ballerina to appear with the Metropolitan Opera Company (1951); Whoopi Goldberg was born (1955); The United States Supreme Court upheld a lower court ruling which banned segregation on public buses in Montgomery, AL (1956); Carl Stokes elected as mayor of Cleveland, Oh, and became the first Black elected Mayor of a major American city (1967); Dwight Gooden became the youngest pitcher to win the Cy Young award (1985);
14th – Booker T. Washington succumbed (1915); Valerie Jarret was born (1956); or
15th - Payton Johnson received the patent for the swinging chair (1881); Arthur Dorrington became the first Black person to play organized hockey (1950); Professor Arthur Lewis received the Nobel Prize in economics, and became the first Black person to receive the award in a category other than peace (1979); Rosa Parks awarded the Springarn Medal (1979)?
