1st 1787 - African Free School, 1st free school in New York City,
opens.
1868 - 1st Civil Rights Act passes.
1901 - W.E.B. Dubois begins publication of the NAACP monthly
magazine, Crisis.
1945 - The 1st issue of Ebony magazine is published.
1964 - NAACP resumed operation in Alabama for the 1st time
since enjoined from
operation in 1956.
1984 - South African Defense Force occupy townships.
2nd 1930 - Haile Selassie I is crowned King of Ethiopia.
1954 - Charles diggs, Jr. was elected to the House of
Representatives from
Detroit, MI.
1983 - President Ronald Reagan signs a law designating the 3rd
Monday in January as Martin Luther King Day.
3rd 1896 - J.H. Hunter patented portable weighing scales.
1926 - Carter G. Woodson initiates Negro History Week.
1961 - The American Anthropological Association officially
reaffirmed its belief in
inherent equality of Blacks.
1974 - Harold Ford is elected to Congress from Tennessee.
1983 - Jesse Jackson announces his candidacy for President of
the United States.
4th 1879 - T. Elkins patented the refrigerating apparatus.
1953 - Hulan Jack becomes the 1st African-American Manhattan
N.Y. C. borough president.
1992 - Carol Moseley Braun becomes the 1st African-American
woman to be elected to the United States Senate.
5th 1962 - Leroy Johnson was elected the 1st African-American to
sit in the State Legislature of Georgia since
Reconstruction.
1968 - Shirley Chisholm becomes the 1st African-American to
be elected to Congress.
6th 1920 - James Weldon Johnson becomes the 1st African-
American executive Secretary of the NAACP.
1962 - Gerald Lamb is elected State Treasurer of Connecticut.
7th 1950 - Alexa Canady, the 1st female African-American
neurosurgeon, is born in Lansing, Michigan.
1955 - The Supreme Court ruled, banning segregation in public
recreational facilities, in a landmark Baltimore, Maryland
case.
1967 - Charles Stokes of Cleveland, Ohio and Richard Hatcher
of Gary, Indiana are elected Mayor.
1989 - L. Douglass Wilder is elected Governor of Virginia.
8th 1878 - Marshall Walter Taylor, "Major Taylor", the worlds fastest
bicycle racer for a 12 year period, is born in Indianapolis,
Indiania.
1908 - Horace Mann Bond, educator, author, is born.
1962 - Edward Wm. Brooke, becomes the 1st African-American
elected Massachusetts Attorney General.
1966 - Edward Wm. Brooke becomes the 1st elected
U.S.Senator since reconstruction.
9th 1731 - Benjamin Banneker, Inventor, Mathematician, and
astronomer, is born in Ellicott City, Maryland(d.1796).
1868 - Howard Medical School is founded.
1901 - William Monroe Trotter founded the Guardia Newspaper,
in Boston, Massachusetts.
1923 - Dorothy Dandridge is born(d.1965).
10th 1775 - The British offers freedom to any slaves that will join
them against the Colonies during rhe Revolutionary War.
1891 - Inventor, Granville T. Woods patented the Electric
Railway.
1961 - Andrew Hatcher is named associate Press Secretary to
President John F. Kennedy.
11th 1782 - Elihu Embree, Tennessee emancipationist, is born.
1831 - Nat Turner, slave revolt leader is hanged in
Southampton, Virginia.
1890 - D. McCree patented the portable fire escape.
1984 - Reverand Martin Luther King, Sr.,"Daddy King", dies.
12th 1879 - Bert Williams, pioneering actor and comedian, is born.
1922 - Sigma Gamma Rho sorority is organized by Mary Lou
Allison and six other teachers. .
1941 - Madame Lillian Evanti and Mary Cardwell Dawson
establish the National Negro Opera Company.
1967 - Pearl Bailey opens in an all African-American cast of
"Hello Dolly" of Broadway.
13th 1913 - Dr. Daniel Hale Williams, pioneering surgeon, becomes a
member of the American College of Surgeons
1922 - The given official date of the beginning of the "Black
Renaissance", in Harlem, New York.
1940 - The United States Supreme Court rules in Hansberry vs
Lee that African-Americans cannot be barred from 'white'
neighborhoods.
1962 - The 1st African-American to be elected to represent a
California District in the House of representatives was
Augustus Hawkins.
14th 1878 - It is reported that Opera Singer Marie Selika, along with
her husband, baritone Sampson Williams, perform in a
private conscert in the White House Green Room for
President and Mrs. Hayes.
1915 - Booker T. Washington, educator, orator, and founder of
Tuskeegee
Institure, dies.
1985 - Makeda Wilson is born.
15th 1825 - African-American feminist Sarah Jane Woodson is born
in Chillicother, Ohio.
1887 - Granville T. Woods patented his Synchronous Multiplier
Railway Telegraph.
1928 - African-American Tenor, Roland Hayes, opens his fifth
American Tour with a sold out concert at Carnegie Hall
in Manhattan, New York.
1960 - United States Marshalls escort 4 African-American girls
to two New Orleans schools.
