Harold Joseph Mack Jr. - Voice and Viewpoint

Arthur Allen Fletcher, “The Father of Affirmative Action”

Arthur Allen Fletcher is known to many as the father of affirmative action. In the following account historian David Hamilton Golland describes the career of Fletcher, a Republican civil rights activist during the last half of the 20th

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Source: Black Past

Stevie Wonder

Songs like Isnt She Lovely, Superstition and You Are the Sunshine of My Life won Stevie Wonder more than 20 Grammy Awards and made him one of the most popular rhythm and blues musicians of the 1960s and 1970s. Wonder grew up in Detroit, singing in church choirs and listening to early Motown

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Source: Fact Monster - Black History

May

13

1950

Death of Coleman Young

Former Detroit Mayor Coleman Young died on this day. He was 79 years old. Young became Detroits first Black mayor and presided over his adopted city for an unprecedented five terms. Young died at Sinai Hospital of respiratory failure caused by advanced emphysema.

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Source: Blackfacts.com

Nov

28

1997

Robert Duncanson

Robert Duncanson, painter, suffered a severe mental breakdown and ended his life on this day in the Michigan State Retreat in Detroit.

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Source: Blackfacts.com

Dec

20

1997

The United States Colored Troops (1863-1865)

The United States Colored Troops (USCT) was the designation given to the approximately 175 regiments of non-white soldiers that served during the Civil War. The troops were primarily African American, but Native Americans, Asian Americans, and Pacific Islanders were all included within the

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Source: Black Past

Jan

1

1863

Smalls, Robert (1839-1915)

Robert Smalls was born in Beaufort, South Carolina, on April 5, 1839 and worked as a house slave until the age of 12. At that point his owner, John K. McKee, sent him to Charleston to work as a waiter, ship rigger, and sailor, with all earnings going to McKee. This arrangement continued until

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Source: Black Past

May

13

1862

Robert Pelham

Robert Pelham was born in January of 1859 in Petersburg, Virginia. His parents, Robert and Frances Pelham, moved the family to Detroit, Michigan in hopes of finding a more favorable atmosphere for their children to receive an education and opportunities for decent employment. While enrolled in

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Source: Black History Resources

Nov

26

2012

Wright, Theodore Sedgwick (ca. 1797-1847)

Theodore Sedgwick Wright, prominent clergyman, antislavery leader, and reformer was thought to have been born in New Jersey in 1797. He attended the New York African Free School. With the help of New York Governor Dewitt Clinton, Arthur Tappan and others from Princeton Theological Seminary, he

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Source: Black Past

(1916) Robert R. Moton, “A Life of Achievement”

Robert Russa Moton is best known as the successor to Booker T. Washington as president of Tuskegee Institute. He assumed the presidency of the institution shortly after Washington’s death in 1915. Moton’s life reflects striking parallels to his predecessor. Like Washington, he was born on

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Source: Black Past

Feb

11

1916

Thomas Hearns

Thomas Hearns was born on October 18, 1958 in Tennessee and relocated to Michigan with his family at the age of 5. After she got divorced from his father, Hearns’ mother remarried and gave Hearns six more siblings from the second marriage, adding up to a total of eight

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Source: Black History Resources

Oct

18

1958

Algiers, Algeria (circa 9th century AD--)

Algiers, the capital city of Algeria, lies along the northwestern edge of a large bay in the Mediterranean Sea. The largest city in Algeria, Algiers has served as a principal seaport as well as a commercial, cultural, and political center for the

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Source: Black Past

Birthday

Charles Wade Barkley, 36, basketball player, born Leeds, AL, February 20, 1963

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Source: Blackfacts.com

Feb

20

1963

Rickey Henderson

Rickey Nelson Henley Henderson is a retired professional baseball player who played for 9 Major League Baseball teams between 1979 and 2003. He was born on December 25, 1958 in Chicago, Illinois. His father left the family when he was two years old and later died in a car accident. His mother

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Source: Black History Resources

Jun

24

1979

Singer Diana Ross born

Actress/Singer Diana Ross, of the Supremes singing group, was born in Detroit, Michigan.

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Source: Blackfacts.com

Mar

26

1944

Frank Robinson

Ruth Robinson’s tenth and last child, Frank Robinson Jr., was born in August 31, 1935 after her marriage to her third husband, Frank Robinson. Unfortunately, her third marriage did not work out either and the mother moved to California from Texas with Robinson Jr. and his two

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Source: Black History Resources

Aug

31

1935

National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders (The Kerner Report), 1967

REPORT OF THE NATIONAL ADVISORY COMMISSION ON CIVIL DISORDERS

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Source: Black Past

Jul

28

1967

(1879) John Mercer Langston, “The Exodus: The Causes Which Led The Colored People of the South to Leave Their Homes – The Lesson

? In 1879 an unanticipated migration of nearly seven thousand African Americans from Mississippi and Louisiana to Kansas prompted a debate among national black leaders. Frederick Douglass thought it unwise that black women and men would leave the South. John Mercer Langston disagreed. As in this

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Source: Black Past

Tony Gwynn

Anthony Keith Gwynn, Sr., better known as Tony Gwynn, was a baseball pro who played for the San Diego Padres. He was born on May 9, 1960 in Los Angeles, California to Charles and Vendella Gwynn. The family moved to Long Beach, California when he 9 years old. He had two brothers, an elder brother

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Source: Black History Resources

Jun

16

2014

Brown, Jill E. (1950- )

Jill Elaine Brown became the first African American woman to serve as a pilot for a major U.S airline when she was hired by Texas international Airlines at the age of 28. Her passion for flying began as a teenager, leading her into the U.S. Navy flight training program where she became its first

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Source: Black Past

The Harlem Renaissance in the American West

In the following article historians Bruce Glasrud and Cary Wintz discuss their new book, The Harlem Renaissance in the American West which argues that the literary and artistic outpouring by African Americans during the third decade of the 20th Century was a national phenomenon which included the

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Source: Black Past

Charles C. DiggsJr.

Charles C. Diggs Jr. of Detroit elected Michigans first Black congressman.

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Source: Blackfacts.com

Nov

2

1954

(1854) William Lloyd Garrison, “No Compromise with the Evil of Slavery”

By 1854 William Lloyd Garrison was the most prominent abolitionist in the United States. Beginning with his newspaper, the Liberator, which he established in Boston in 1831, Garrison led the effort to end slavery in the nation. In this 1854 speech which appears below, Garrison called for complete

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Source: Black Past

Louis Stokes born

Louis Stokes, former mayor of Detroit, Michigan, and member of the US House of Representatives, was born in Cleveland, Ohio. Stokes was the first African American elected to the House from Ohio.

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Source: Blackfacts.com

Feb

23

1925

Savage, Augustus Alexander, “Gus” (1925 - )

Augustus Alexander Savage, later better known as “Gus”, was born in Detroit, Michigan, on October 30 1925. Savage attended public schools in Chicago and graduated from Wendell Phillips High School in 1943 before joining the United States Army. He served until 1946 before earning

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Source: Black Past

Jan

3

1981

Coleman Young was elected mayor of Detroit, becoming one of the first two Black

Coleman Young was elected mayor of Detroit, becoming one of the first two Black mayors of citys with over a million citizens, 1973

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Source: Blackfacts.com

Nov

6

1973

(1863) Frederick Douglass, Men of Color, To Arms!

? For the first two years of the Civil War black and white abolitionists urged both the liberation of the slaves and the recruitment of African American men in defense of the Union. Barely three months after Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation went into effect, Frederick Douglass gave a speech in R

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Source: Black Past

Percy Julian

Percy Julian was born on April 11, 1899 in Birmingham, Alabama, one of six children. His father, a railroad mail clerk, and his mother, a school teacher stressed education to their children. This emphasis would ultimately prove successful as two sons went on to become physicians and three daughters

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Source: Black History Resources

Emory O. Jackson, the Birmingham World, and the Fight for Civil Rights in Alabama

In the article below, Kimberley Mangun, an associate professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Utah, describes her ongoing research on the Birmingham (Alabama) World and its longtime editor, Emory O. Jackson. Mangun is writing a cultural biography of Jackson and the

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Source: Black Past

The TransPacific Struggle over Citizenship: Seeking Welfare Rights in Kawasaki City, Japan and Los Angeles, California,1962-1982

Historians rarely compare the mostly working-class and poor Korean population in Japan and African Americans seeking economic justice in the United States. Japanese scholar Kazuyo Tsuchiya of Kanagawa University takes on that task in her new book, Reinventing Citizenship: Black Los Angeles, Korean

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Source: Black Past

Shelby Davidson

While Shelby Davidson could not viewed as a prolific inventor, he is significant in that he served as a great example of education, determination and

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Source: Black History Resources

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