Today in Black History
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Civil Rights leader and former Executive Director of the NAACP, Roy Wilkins died on September 8, 1981, in New York City at age 80.
He began work as a journalist for the Minnesota Daily and became editor for an African American newspaper named "The St. Paul Appeal" and later editor of the Kansas City Call. Wilkins moved on to the NAACP as Asst Secretary from 1931-1934. and replaced W.E.B. Du Bois as Editor of the NAACP's Crisis magazine.
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🥰THE OPRAH WINFREY SHOW DEBUTS NATIONWIDE (1986)
On September 8, 1986, The Oprah Winfrey Show debuts Nationwide making the host the first African American woman to host a nationally syndicated television talk show.
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🎾 Arthur Ashe Becomes The First African American To Win The US Open Tennis Championship🎾
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Twenty brave young African American students began school at previously segregated schools in Alabama on September 10, 1963. The day before had become a national incident when segregationist Governor George C. Wallace had refused the demands of federal authorities and blocked the attendance of African American students.
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September 11, 1956 Cincinnati Reds outfielder Frank Robinson ties rookie record with his 38th HR
Mr. Robinson was a Baseball Hall of Fame outfielder who enjoyed a 20-year playing career with most notably the Reds (1956-65) and Orioles (1966-71).
Between 1956 and 1974 was a MLB All-Star on 14 occasions.
His playing No. 20 has been retired by the Cleveland, Cincinnati and Baltimore clubs.
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Dr. Mae Carol Jemison became the first African American woman to travel in space on September 12, 1992 aboard the Space Shuttle Endeavour.
Jemison was selected as the first African American female candidate in the astronaut program by NASA on June 4, 1987. She added to her historic legacy when she participated in a space mission from September 12 to September 20, 1992 on STS-47 as a Mission Specialist.
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FIRST AFRICAN AMERICAN RHODES SCHOLAR BORN
September 13, 1886
Writer, philosopher and the first African American Rhodes Scholar, Alain Locke born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The Rhodes Scholarship is an international postgraduate award for students to study at the University of Oxford, in the UK.
Best known for his writings on and about the Harlem Renaissance. He is unofficially called the "Father of the Harlem Renaissance."
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September 14, 1955, Singer-Songwriter and Rock 'n' Roll Pioneer Little Richard records "Tutti Frutti" at J & M Studio in New Orleans, Louisiana
Little Richard was one of rock n' roll's most influential early performers. His sound and music went on to have a strong influence of such artists as The Beatles, Elvis Presley and James Brown.
🎶In 1986 he became one of the 10 original inductees into the Rock n' Roll Hall of Fame.🎶
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September 15, 1963—In one of the most heartless terrorist attacks of the Civil Rights Movement, the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala., is bombed by White supremacists and Ku Klux Klan members.
Four little Black girls are killed. But instead of scaring African Americans into backing away from their demands, the act actually inspired the Civil Rights Movement.
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September 16, 1933—“Emperor Jones” is released on this day by United Artists. It starred social activist Paul Robeson as Brutus Jones. It was the first Hollywood film with a Black leading man and a White supporting cast.
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September 17, 1861—Hampton Institute (now university) is established by leaders of the American Missionary Association (AMA) after the Civil War to provide education to freedmen.
Mary Smith Peake was hired as the first teacher and held the first class on September 17, 1861.
HU has now become one of the nation’s leading predominately Black educational institutions.
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September 18, 1919 – An American football pioneer, Fritz Pollard becomes the first Black person to play Professional football for a major team, the Akron Indians. Pollard was also the first Black man to play in the Rose Bowl and was the first African American coach.
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Sept. 19, 1963 – Iota Phi Theta Fraternity was founded on this year at Morgan State University.
Twelve men were influenced by the civil rights movement (Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), Black Panthers, Malcolm X and Stokely Carmichael and more) in establishing the fraternity. It is one of the Divine 9, a collection of predominantly Black fraternities and sororities.
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September 20, 1664—Maryland enacts the nation’s first “Anti-Amalgamation Law.” It outlawed marriages between Black men and White women.
Soon, several other colonies followed it's example. It was not until the 1960s that SCOTUS in the famous Loving v. Virginia case declared all such laws un-Constitutional. In 2000 Alabama officially became the last state to strike from the books its law banning interracial marriages.
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September 21, 1872 ~1st Black Student At Annapolis Naval Academy
John Henry Conyers of South Carolina became the first Black student at Annapolis Naval Academy.
From the beginning, he met with difficulty, being subjected to all manner of hazing by his fellow midshipmen. He was cursed at, spat upon and physically manhandled. Some of his classmates even attempted to drown him. He later resigned.
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September 22, 1862 ~ President Abraham Lincoln issues a preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, that set a date of January 1, 1863 to end slavery for more than 3 million enslaved people. The proclamation also recasts the Civil War as a fight against slavery.
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September 23, 1961, Thurgood Marshall was appointed by then-President John F. Kennedy to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, a position he held until 1965, when Kennedy’s successor, Lyndon B. Johnson, named him solicitor general.
Following the retirement of Justice Tom Clark in 1967, President Johnson appointed Marshall to the Supreme Court, a decision confirmed by the Senate with a 69-11 vote.
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September 24, 1935~Boxer Joe Louis becomes the first Black boxer to draw a million dollar gate. Louis captured his 22nd consecutive win over Max Baer with a fourth-round knockout.
Nicknamed "the Brown Bomber", he is widely regarded as one of the greatest boxers of all time. He was victorious in 25 consecutive title defenses, a record for all weight classes. He had the longest single reign as champion of any boxer in history.
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September 25, 1974~ Barbara Hancock (pictured center in the dark dress) became the first black woman in American history to become a White House Fellow. She was then an educated young lady who earned the prestigious fellowship after going through the general application process.
Hancock’s historic fellowship was made official by the administration of U.S. President Gerald Ford.
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September 26, 1962~Malvin Russell Goode became the first black network news correspondent when he was hired by ABC News as its UN reporter. This was prompted by complaints from Jackie Robinson about the lack of black reporters.
In 1971, he became the 1st Black member of the Radio and Television News Directors Association.
In 1990, the National Association of Black Journalists inducted Mr. Goode into its hall of fame.
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September 27, 1950—Ralph J. Bunch is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his successful negotiation of an Arab-Israeli truce in Palestine the previous year.
He is the first African American to be awarded a Nobel Prize, and in 1963, in 1963, President John F. Kennedy honored him with the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
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September 28, 1868 ~ Opelousas Massacre
Deemed one of the bloodiest incidents of racial violence in the Reconstruction era, hundreds of blacks were killed by armed white militias in an ethnic war.
The goal was to reverse political gains made by Black citizens after the Civil War, intimidate them from exercising their newly found rights and restore the racial hierarchy of the slavery era.
https://www.history.com/news/voter-suppression-history-opelousas-massacre
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September 29, 1975 ~ WGPR-TV Detroit became the first fully owned and operated African-American TV station in the US.
In 1994, CBS bought WGPR and dropped all existing programming in favor of CBS and syndicated programs, changing the call letters to WWJ-TV.
The original studios for WGPR-TV are still in use and, have been preserved as a museum and recognized as a cultural landmark in the National Register of Historic Places.
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September 30, 1962 ~ James Meredith entered the University of Mississippi escorted by US Marshals. Due to violence opposing his entry, they had to leave and return on the next day October 1, which is viewed by many as his official first day at Ole Miss.
When Meredith initially applied to the University of Mississippi he was accepted, when his race was discovered, he was denied entry.
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October 1, 1952 ~ Joe Black became the first black pitcher to win a World Series game. Black pitched for the Brooklyn Dodgers in the 1952 World Series and helping his team to defeat the New York Yankees 4-2.
Black was also the 1952 Rookie of the Year.
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October 3, 1974 ~ Frank Robinson named manager of the Cleveland Indians and became the first Black manager in the major leagues.
He is the only player in baseball history to win the MVP Award in each league (Cincinnati, 1961; Baltimore, 1966). He was also the Rookie of the Year (1956), World Series MVP (1966), All-Star Game MVP (1971), a Gold Glove winner (1958), and the Triple Crown (1966).
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October 4, 1951 ~ Henrietta Lacks died at the age of 31 from the effects of cervical cancer on October 4, 1951, after treatment in Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland, but her cells (HeLa) cells lived on.
HeLa cells have had a profound and lasting impact on the fields of medicine, biology, and scientific research, contributing to numerous breakthroughs and advancements that have benefited humanity.
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October 5, 1869 ~ 1st Reconstruction legislature (27 Blacks, 150 whites) met in Richmond, VA.
With the passage of the Reconstruction Act of 1867, newly enfranchised Black people gained a voice in government for the first time winning election to southern state legislatures and Congress.
Less than a decade later, reactionary forces—including the KKK—would reverse the changes in a violent backlash that restored white supremacy in the South.
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October 6, 1923 ~Jack Trice, the first black athlete at Iowa was trampled by rival athletes during his “first real college game.” He died two days later at age 21
In the decades after his death, his story receded from memory, only resurfacing every so often. In 1997, after a long fight, Iowa State arena was renamed Jack Trice Stadium, the only Division I Football Bowl Subdivision stadium across the US to bear the name of a Black man.
This Black Football Player Was Fatally Injured During a Game. A Century Later, a College Stadium Bears His Name
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October 6, 1871~ Fisk Jubilee Singers begin their 1st national tour
A cappella group of 9 students from Fisk University set out to raise $20,000 for the financially troubled institution.
They were instrumental in preserving African American spirituals and bringing them to a wider audience.
This was the 1st world tour by a musical act. The efforts helped fund education of freed slaves and put Nashville on the map as a global music center.
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October 7, 1993~ Writer, Toni Morrison, awarded the Nobel Prize in literature
Toni Morrison (1931–2019) "who in novels characterized by visionary force and poetic import, gives life to an essential aspect of American reality. She became the first black woman of any nationality and the second American woman to win the prize since Pearl S. Buck in 1938.
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October 8, 2004 ~Kenyan ecologist Dr. Wangari Muta Maathai becomes the first African woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize.
Her work was considered both unwelcome and subversive in her own country, where her outspokenness constituted stepping far outside traditional gender roles.
Upon winning, the committee commended her “holistic approach to sustainable development that embraces democracy, human rights, and women’s rights in particular.”
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October 9, 2009—In a move which surprised just about everyone, President Barack Obama is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Obama had been in office for less than 9 months at the time but the Nobel Committee in Oslo, Norway, said it was impressed by his “promise” of disarmament and diplomacy.
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October 10, 1935—George Gershwin’s “Porgy and Bess,” a Black spiritual opera, premiers on Broadway in New York City. It starred Todd Duncan from Howard University. The play becomes one of the most popular Black-themed shows ever to hit Broadway. The 1959 movie version stars Sidney Poitier and Dorothy Dandridge.
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October 11, 1939~The NAACP organizes the NAACP Education and Legal Defense Fund which goes on to win many important legal battles guaranteeing civil and educational rights for Blacks.
LDF is wholly independent and separate from the NAACP. Although it can trace its origins to the legal department of the NAACP, Thurgood Marshall founded LDF as a separate legal entity in 1940 and LDF became totally independent from the NAACP in 1957.
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Around October 12, 1945~Jesse James Payne was lynched in Madison County, FL. The lynching came to typify the lies that prompted many a lynching.
Payne got into an argument with his White boss and threatened to expose his boss’ illegal dealings. But the boss then spread a rumor that he had molested his daughter and Payne was lynched.
This was not unusual in FL which by 1920 had the nation’s highest lynching rate relative to its population.
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October 13, 1914~Garret Morgan, an African-American inventor and community leader, invents and patents the gas mask. He is renowned for a heroic rescue in 1916 in which he and three others used the mask he’d developed to save workers trapped within a water intake tunnel, 50 feet beneath Lake Erie.
Morgan made numerous other inventions, but is widely remembered the gas mask and traffic signal.
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October 14, 1834~Henry Blair of Maryland successfully patents his corn-planting machine. The patent is one of the first to be filed by a black person in America.
In 1836 he obtained a second patent for a cotton planter. Blair had been a successful farmer for years and developed the inventions as a means of increasing efficiency in farming.
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At the time that his patents were granted, US patent law allowed both freed and enslaved people to obtain patents (Blair was freed). In 1857, this law was challenged by a slave-owner who claimed that he owned "all the fruits of the slave's labor," including his slave's inventions. This resulted in a change of the law in 1858 which stated that slaves were not citizens, and therefore could not hold patents. In 1871, the law was changed to grant all men patent rights.
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October 15,1883~The U.S. Supreme Court declares the Civil Rights Act of 1875 unconstitutional. The decision was spurred by the end of Reconstruction and helped to usher in the Jim Crow period in the South whereby Black rights won during Reconstruction were taken away.
Black Americans would have to wait eight decades before Congress passed another civil rights law barring discrimination in public accommodations and employment.
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October 16, 1940~Benjamin Oliver Davis Sr. is named the first Black general in the regular U.S. Army.
Davis was a career officer in the United States Army. One of the few black officers in an era when American society was largely segregated. In 1940 he was promoted to brigadier general, the army's first African American general officer.
Davis died in 1970 at the age of 90.
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October 17, 1871—President Ulysses Grant declared martial law suspends the writ of habeas corpus in nine South Carolina counties in order to combat a Ku Klux Klan terror campaign against Blacks and some progressive Whites.
Grant pretty much crushed the Klan during this period. It would not rise again until the 1920s.
https://omny.fm/shows/this-day-in-history-class/u-s-president-ulysses-s-grant-suspends-habeas-corp
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October 18, 1968 ~ Robert (Bob) Beamon sets record for long jump at the Summer Olympics in Mexico City with a first jump of 8.90 m.
His world record stood for 23 years until it was finally broken in 1991 when Mike Powell jumped 8.95 m at the World Championships in Tokyo, but Beamon's jump is still the Olympic record and 55 years later remains the second-longest wind-legal jump in history.
This one always breaks my heart. The book, THE IMMORTAL LIFE OF HENRIETTA LACKS, is a worthy read that highlights the lack of choice over her own cellular destiny.
Smack-dab in the middle of the Tuskegee Study, a century after gynecology was built on the brutalization of Black bodies... we thank Lacks for the gift that was taken from her. And we never forget the unconscionable human trespass. 🖤🕊️ May we honour her by doing research with integrity today.
https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/henrietta-lacks/immortal-life-of-henrietta-lacks
@MLClark You have beautifully captured the profound impact of Mrs. Lacks story and the ethical questions it raises.
Her story and that of the Tuskegee study serve as reminders of the importance of informed consent, ethical conduct, and the need to ensure that advancements in science and medicine are made with respect for the individuals who contribute to them. By learning from these historical injustices, we can work towards a more ethical and equitable future in research and healthcare.
Thank you, as always, for creating space for these important conversations. 💛
@MLClark My pleasure! 🤗 I appreciate you and your valuable input into these sometimes difficult but necessary conversations. 💕
Tuskegee was about as indefensible as it gets. Thanks for the breadcrumb, friends. 💜
You're absolutely right. The Tuskegee Syphilis Study is an indefensible and tragic part of our history.
It serves as a stark reminder of the unethical treatment of marginalized communities and the importance of safeguarding the rights and well-being of all individuals.
Proud to make your acquaintance, Dr. 👾
The Tuskegee Experiment: Crash Course Black American History #29
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National shame!
@nursefrombirth That brief time between emancipation and Jim Crow was the perfect opportunity to fulfill every promise. Such a waste.
@nursefrombirth I'm upset that my public education omitted such a large slice of American history. I'm grateful that there are those like Dr Henry Louis Gates - and you - who work to somewhat remedy that omission.
@walterbays Thank you so much for your thoughtful comment, and I share your sentiment about the importance of including diverse and often overlooked aspects of American history in our educational systems.
Dr. Gates and others who work to shed light on these often overlooked aspects of history play a crucial role in broadening our understanding and promoting a more inclusive narrative of our past.
Thank you for your support and for being a part of this important conversation.
@nursefrombirth Wow! I never knew that!
@stueytheround
It's always fascinating to discover new aspects of history, and I must admit that learning about the Jubilee Singers was also a revelation for me. Their remarkable story and contributions to music and culture are truly inspiring.
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@nursefrombirth
I remember watching the filmed version on television as a very young child with my parents. I remember clearly feeling how narrow my world was at the time. It's a profound story that stuck with me when I traveled the country as a young adult encountering a wider view of the world.
@CherNohio Thank you for sharing such a touching and personal memory. It's incredible how powerful and transformative storytelling can be. "Porgy and Bess" is indeed a profound narrative that has resonated with many, and it's inspiring to hear how it impacted your perspective as you encountered a wider world as a young adult. Stories like these have the unique ability to broaden our horizons and instill empathy and understanding. 🥰🤗💪🏽
@nursefrombirth Oh yes, they do. And, I’m thankful for my parents who embraced the opportunities for my brother and I to broaden our horizons.
What you have to wonder is how many inventions/improvements didn't happen or were delayed because the person who had the drive, the curiosity, the creativity, the sheer intelligence to create them was limited by those in power because of their race and because of hateful, often willful, ignorance toward them.
@SECRET_ASIAN_MAN Yes, pretty sad right. Got rights taken away. Thank the LORD I was born in 1964 when I would be considered a human being with the rights thereof. I NEVER would have made it otherwise. Got too much mouth and DO what I want.
We must continue to do better.
@nursefrombirth thanks, learned something new about Grant.
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October 2, 1967 Chief Justice Earl Warren swears in Thurgood Marshall, the first Black justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.
Hometown Fact: In 2005, BWI's name officially becomes Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport. Recognizing the achievements and the legacy of Justice Thurgood Marshall, an exhibit chronicling his life and career is displayed on the upper level of the BWI terminal.
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