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Goode, Malvin Russell (1908–1995)
Malvin Russell Goode was the first African American news correspondent for a major television network. Goode was born on February 13, 1908, in White Plains, Virginia, but his family moved to Homestead, Pennsylvania, near Pittsburgh, when he was very young. Goode, the third of four boys and two
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Source: Black Past
Sep
26
1936
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
Sponsored by Concerned Black Men of Massachusetts
(1966) Stokely Carmichael, “Definitions of Black Power”
On July 31, 1966, Stokely Carmichael, the newly appointed Chairman of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), describes black power to a mostly African American audience at Cobo Auditorium in Detroit.  Part of the address appears
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Source: Black Past
Sponsored by Pride Academy
Jul
31
1966
George Gervin
Born on April 27, 1952 in Detroit, Michigan, George Gervin is a retired professional basketball player who is known to be one of the greatest shooting guards in NBA
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Source: Black History Resources
Sponsored by Center for Critical Race and Digital Studies
Apr
27
1952
Taye Diggs
Taye Diggs was born on January 2, 1971 in Newark, New Jersey. He is the oldest of five children born to Marcia and Andre Young. Diggs grew up in Rochester, New York where he attended Allendale Columbia School. He later transferred to School of the Arts. He also received a Bachelor of Fine Arts from
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Source: Black History Resources
Jan
2
1971
Congressman Denny Heck, Olympia, Washington
On November 6th, 2012, the residents of Washington’s new 10th Congressional District elected Denny Heck to be the district’s first member of the United States House of Representatives. Since taking office, Congressman Hecks top priorities have been creating jobs, growing our economy and keeping the
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Source: Black Past
Slavery in Oregon: The Reuben Shipley Saga
Few Americans realize that the institution of slavery reached the Pacific Northwest in the two decades before the Civil War.  A small number of the white settlers who followed the Oregon Trail from Independence, Missouri to Oregon City brought bondservants.  Oregon historian R. Gregory
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Source: Black Past
Sponsored by Prospanica Boston Professional Chapter
Jul
13
1853
Sojourner Truth
Sojourner Truth, born November 26, 1797 was an African American abolitionist and women’s right activist. She was born as Isabella to James who was an African captured from the Gold Coast and Elizabeth Baumfree. James and Elizabeth were bought by Colonel Hardenbergh from slave
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Source: Black History Resources
Sponsored by Diversity In Action
Nov
26
1797
Price, Mary Violet Leontyne (1927- )
Born to James and Kate Price on February 10, 1927, in Laurel, Mississippi, Leontyne Price became one of the world’s leading opera sopranos and among the first African Americans to gain prominence in major performance halls in that musical genre. Her parents were amateur musicians and instilled in
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Source: Black Past
Sponsored by Massachusetts Black Lawyers Association (MBLA)
Feb
10
1927
Documentary Films on Blackpast.org
Capra, Frank The Negro Soldier 1943
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Source: Black Past
Knoxville College (1875- )
Knoxville College was founded in 1875 as a missionary effort of the United Presbyterian Church of North America in order to promote religious, moral, and educational leadership among freed men and women. Located north of downtown Knoxville, Tennessee, in the city’s Mechanicsville community, the
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Source: Black Past
Eminem
Name at birth: Marshall Bruce Mathers III
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Source: Fact Monster - Black History
Sponsored by Museum of African American History in Massachusetts
Aug
14
2009
Ossian Sweet
Ossian Sweet, prominent Detroit doctor, arrested on murder charges after shots were fired into a mob in front of the Sweet home in a previously all-white area. Sweet was defended by Clarence Darrow, who won an acquittal in the second trial.
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Source: Blackfacts.com
Sep
8
1925
Louis, Joe
Louis, Joe (Joseph Louis Barrow) lo͞o´ĭs [key], 1914–81, American boxer, b. Lafayette, Ala. His father, a sharecropper, died when Louis was four years old, and in 1926 his stepfather took the family to Detroit, where Louis became interested in boxing. At 18 he began an amateur career in the
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Source: Fact Monster - Black History
Kirby Puckett
Kirby Puckett was a professional baseball player for the Minnesota Twins of the Major Baseball League. He was born on March 14, 1960 in Chicago, Illinois and raised in a public housing project in Chicago. He attended and graduated from Calumet High School, where he played baseball. Due to his short
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Source: Black History Resources
Sponsored by Diversity In Action
Mar
14
1960
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
Sponsored by Eastern Bank
Chambers, Julius L. (1936-2013)
Julius LeVonne Chambers was a twentieth century African-American civil rights activist and lawyer. Born October 6, 1936, to William and Matilda Chambers in Mt. Gilead, a small town in Montgomery County, North Carolina, he faced segregationist laws from birth. Opportunities for young black people
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Source: Black Past
Barney L. Ford, Gold Miner, born
Early Colorado gold miner, hotel magnate and entreprenuer, former slave Barney L. Ford, was born in Stafford Court House, Virginia. Through a number of business dealings, Ford became a wealthy man but was dogged by a series of tragic accidents. The restaurants and hotels he owned in
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Source: Blackfacts.com
Sponsored by Diversity In Action
Jan
22
1822
Hayes, Ralph (1922-1999)
Ralph Hayes grew up poor in rural, segregated Cairo, Illinois, the fourth of twelve children. He studied journalism at Northwestern University and then transferred to the University of Washington, where he earned his B.A. and M.A. degrees in political science. In 1950 he married Elaine
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Source: Black Past
Booker Taliaferro Washington (Booker T. Washington)was born on this day.
Booker Taliaferro Washington (Booker T. Washington)was born on this day in Hales Ford, Virginia.
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Source: Blackfacts.com
Sponsored by Diversity In Action
Apr
5
1856
Shelley v. Kraemer (1948)
U.S. Supreme Court
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Source: Black Past
Sponsored by National Association of Black Accountants (NABA) Boston Metropolitan Chapter
Ragsdale, Marguerita (1948- )
Marguerita Dianne Ragsdale was born in April 1948 in Richmond, Virginia to Lillie and Vernon Ragsdale and raised alongside her five sisters on a farm in McKenney, Dinwiddie County, Virginia. After starting her undergraduate work at Virginia State University in Petersburg, she transferred to
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Source: Black Past
First Black-owned station in US, WGPR-TV Detroit, begins broadcasting, 1975
First Black-owned television station in US, WGPR-TV Detroit, begins broadcasting, 1975
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Source: Blackfacts.com
Sponsored by National Association of Asian American Professionals (NAAP) Boston Chapter
Sep
29
1975
Adams, Samuel Clifford, Jr. (1920-2001)
Samuel Clifford Adams, Jr., U.S. Ambassador to Niger was born in Waco, Texas on August 15, 1920, to Samuel Clifford Adams and Sarah Catherine (née Roberts) Adams. He grew up in the Fourth Ward section of
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Source: Black Past
Moore's Ford Lynching
During the late afternoon of the 25th of July 1946 four African-Americans were shot dead by a lynch mob at Moores Ford, Walton county, Georgia, about eight miles from the town of Monroe. The grotesquely sprawled bodies of the victims--the Coroner said at least sixty bullets were pumped into
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Source: Blackfacts.com
Jul
25
1946
(1865) Abraham Lincoln, “Abraham Lincoln’s Last Public Address”
? F.A.Q. On April 11, 1865, two days after Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered his army to Union General Ulysses S. Grant, President Abraham Lincoln addressed a jubilant crowd that had gathered outside the White House in Washington, D.C.  While the crowd expected an address celebrating t
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Source: Black Past
Documentary Films on Blackpast.org - African American History - Director
A&E Television Americas Black Warriors (on World War II) 1998
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Source: Black Past
Muhammad, Elijah
Muhammad, Elijah, 1897–1975, American black-nationalist and religious leader, b. near Sandersville, Ga. Originally named Elijah Poole, he left home at 16 and worked at various jobs. In 1923 he settled in Detroit and became an automobile assembly-line worker. In 1931 he became a follower of Wali
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Source: Fact Monster - Black History
Singer Stevie Wonder born
Singer Stevie Wonder born Steveland Judkins in Saginaw,Michigan.
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Source: Blackfacts.com
May
13
1950
Lenhardt, Alfonso E. (1943- )
Alfonso E. Lenhardt is currently Acting Administrator of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). He previously served as the U.S. Ambassador to the United Republic of Tanzania from 2009 to
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Source: Black Past
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