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First African American Before US Supreme Court
John Sweat Rock (1825-1866), a noted Boston lawyer, became in 1865 the first African-American to practice before the U.S. Supreme Court and the first Black person to speak before the U.S. House of Representatives.
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Source: Blackfacts.com
Sponsored by Eastern Bank
Feb
1
1865
National Black Labor convention
National Black labor convention met in Washington.
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Source: Blackfacts.com
Sponsored by Diversity In Action
Dec
6
1869
Al Sharpton
Al Sharpton is a religious leader and political activist. He was born on October 3, 1954, in Brooklyn, New York. His father left the family and Sharpton was raised by his mother. They had to move to the public housing projects, where his mother worked as a maid and supported the family on her
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Source: Black History Resources
Oct
3
1954
Urban League President
Vernon E. Jordan resigned as president of the National Urban League and announced plans to join a Washington law firm. He was succeeded by John E. Jacob, executive vice president of the league.
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Source: Blackfacts.com
Sep
9
1981
Black Women Unite
National Federation of Afro-American Women and the Colored Womens League merged and created the National Association of Colored Women. Mary Church Terrell was elected president at meeting at Washingtons Nineteenth Street Baptist Church.
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Source: Blackfacts.com
Sponsored by National Association of Asian American Professionals (NAAP) Boston Chapter
Jul
21
1896
Bond, Julian
Bond, Julian (Horace Julian Bond), 1940–2015, U.S. civil-rights leader, b. Nashville, Tenn. As a student at Morehouse College, he participated in sit-ins at segregated Atlanta restaurants. He was a founder (1960) of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, serving (1961–65) as its
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Source: Fact Monster - Black History
Sponsored by Center for Critical Race and Digital Studies
Booker T. Washington gains honorary degree
Booker T. Washington receives an honorary degree from Harvard University.
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Source: Blackfacts.com
Apr
15
1896
Prayer Pilgrimage, biggest civil rights
Prayer Pilgrimage, biggest civil rights demonstration to date, held in Washington.
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Source: Blackfacts.com
Sponsored by Christo Rey New York High School
May
17
1957
Robert Smalls steals Confederate ship
It has just gotten dark on the evening of May 12, 1862. General Roswell Ripley and the other white confederate officers of the
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Source: Blackfacts.com
Sponsored by APEX Museum
May
12
1862
James Meredith
James Meredith is a 20th century eminent American Civil Rights Movement figure. He was involved in political advisory committee and also wrote about the social inequality issues. Besides, he was a war veteran and was the first black to be admitted in an all-white
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Source: Black History Resources
Sponsored by NSBE Boston
Jun
25
1933
Supreme Court reversed decision of lower court
Supreme Court reversed decision of lower court which had confirmed $100,000 contempt fine imposed by Alabama on NAACP for refusing to divulge membership.
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Source: Blackfacts.com
Jun
30
1958
Arthur W. Mitchell
Born: 12/22/1883 Lafayette, AlabamaDied: 5/9/1968 Petersburg, VirginiaArthur W. Mitchell was a U.S. Representative from Illinois. Mitchell was the first African American to be elected to the United States Congress as a Democrat.Mitchell was elected to the House of Representatives in 1934, defeating
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Source: Blackfacts.com
Martin Luther King Jr's Death
Martin Luther King Jr. assassinated by white sniper in Memphis, Tennessee. Assassination precipitated a national crisis and rioting in more than one hundred cities. Forty-six persons were killed in major rebellions in Washington, Chicago and other cities. Twenty thousand federal troops and
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Source: Blackfacts.com
Sponsored by New York University
Apr
4
1968
Stephanie Ellis-Smith, Seattle, Washington
Stephanie Ellis-Smith has lived in Seattle for nearly 20 years and has a diverse background in the arts and civic engagement. Stephanie has degrees in English and biochemistry from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and studied retroviruses at the University of
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Source: Black Past
Singer Roberta Flack born
b. 10 February 1937, Asheville, North Carolina, USA. Born into a musical family, Flack graduated from Howard University with a BA in music. She was discovered singing and playing jazz in a Washington nightclub by pianist Les McCann, who recommended her talents to Atlantic Records. Two classy
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Source: Blackfacts.com
Sponsored by Center for Critical Race and Digital Studies
Feb
10
1940
More than 4,000 delegates from one hundred
More than 4,000 delegates from one hundred national organizations attended National Emergency Civil Rights Conference in Washington.
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Source: Blackfacts.com
Jan
15
1950
Williams v. Mississippi (1898)
? Submitted March 18, 1898. Decided April 25, 1898. At June term 1896 of the Circuit Court of Washington County, Mississippi, the plaintiff in error was indicted by a grand jury composed entirely of white men for the crime of murder. On the 15th day of June he made a motion to quash the indic
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Source: Black Past
Sponsored by BARBinc
The Manumission of Monimia Travers: A Slave Freed at Fort Vancouver
Few people identify slavery with Oregon and the Pacific Northwest.  However, there were slaves in the region particularly in the decade before the Civil War.  In the following article, Gregory Paynter Shine, the Chief Ranger and Historian at the Fort Vancouver National Historic Site, describes the
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Source: Black Past
Death of Mordecai Johnson
Death of Mordecai Johnson (86), first Black president of Howard University, in Washington.
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Source: Blackfacts.com
Sep
10
1976
Civil Rights
April 3, 1944. The US Supreme Court, in an 8-1 ruling declared that Blacks could not be barred form voting in the Texas Democratic primaries. The high court repudiated the contention that political parties are private associations and held that discrimination aginst Blacks violated the 15th
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Source: Blackfacts.com
Apr
3
1944
Lincoln Wounded
President Lincoln was shot and critically wounded at Fords Theater in Washington.
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Source: Blackfacts.com
Apr
14
1865
From Slave to Litigant: African Americans in Court in the Post-Civil War South
In the following article Melissa Milewski, a graduate student in history at New York University, describes her research which has uncovered the surprising success of African American litigants in court cases in the post-Civil War
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Source: Black Past
Jan
1
1854
What Comes Naturally: The Loving v. Virginia Case in Historical Perspective
When Richard Loving and Mildred Jeter decided to get married in June 1958, laws banning interracial marriage had been in effect for nearly three centuries.  The colonies of Maryland, Virginia, and Massachusetts had banned intermarriage in 1664, 1691, and 1705.  After the American Revolution, states
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Source: Black Past
Jun
12
1967
The first U.S. stamp ever to honor an African American is issued bearing the lik
The first U.S. stamp ever to honor an African American is issued bearing the likeness of Booker T. Washington.
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Source: Blackfacts.com
Sponsored by Museum of African American History in Massachusetts
Apr
7
1940
Walter E. Washington
President Lyndon B. Johnson named Walter E. Washington commissioner and unofficial mayor of Washington, D.C.
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Source: Blackfacts.com
Sep
6
1967
Maxine Waters birth
Maxine Waters was born this day. Congresswoman Waters is a Democrat fromCalifornia.
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Source: Blackfacts.com
Aug
15
1938
1st Black Supreme Court Justice
Joseph W. Hatchett sworn in as first Black supreme court justice in the South in the twentieth century.
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Source: Blackfacts.com
Sep
2
1975
Rosa Parks.
On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks refused to change seats on a Montgomery, Alabama, bus. On December 5, blacks began a boycott of the bus system, which continued until shortly after December 13, 1956, when the U.S. Supreme Court outlawed bus segregation in the city.
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Source: Blackfacts.com
Dec
1
1955
Jonathan Jasper Wright
Jonathan Jasper Wright was the first Black state supreme court justice. He resigned on this day from the state supreme court in South Carolina after the overthrow of the Reconstruction government, and died in obscurity of tuberculosis.
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Source: Blackfacts.com
Dec
1
1877
Amin (Dada), Idi (1925-2003)
Idi Amin was the Ugandan military dictator and President from 1971 to 1979.  During his reign Amin’s military forces are estimated to have killed 500,000 people and exiled roughly 70,000 non-Ugandan nationals (mostly Indians) from
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Source: Black Past
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