16th 1822 --Violette A. Johnson, the 1st African-American woman
to practice before the U.S. Supreme Court.
1866 -- Freedman's bureau continued over President
Johnson's veto.
1948 -- Ruben Blades, Hispanic actor and musician, is born.
17th 1867 -- Madame C.J. Walker(Sarah Breedlove), 1st African
American woman millionaire, is born(d.1919)
1911 -- Frank Snowden, foremost scholar on African-
American in ancient history, is born in York County, VA
1959 -- Billie Holiday(lady Day), one of the all time greatest
blues singers, dies in New York.
1967 -- John Coltrane, innovative Jazz saxaphonist great,
dies.
18th 1899 -- L.C. Bailey is issued a patent for the Folding Bed.
1918 -- Nelson Mandela, is born.
1941 -- Martha Reeves(Martha and The Vandellas), is born.
1968 -- Fannie Lou Hamer led the fight for voter registration
in the state of Mississippi, which caused the
Party's credentials committee to seat only the
Freedom Democratic Party from Mississippi at the
1968 National Convention, in Chicago, Illinois.
19th 1919 -- District of Columbia Riots aka "The Red Summer".
1964 -- Violence erupts in the Harlem and Bedford Styvesant
sections of New York City.
1979 -- In her second cabinet level appointment, Patricia
Roberts-Harris, is named Secretary of Health and
Human Services in the Carter administration.
1979 -- Nicaraguan Sandinistas win elections.
20th 1942 -- African-American women allowed to join the Womens
Army Corps(WACS)
1957 -- Althea Gibson wins Wimbleton
1967 -- First National Conference on Black Power opens in
Newark, N.J.
21st 1864 -- New Orleans Tribune, 1st daily African-American
newspaper, publishes in English and French.
1896 -- Mary Church Terrell, Founded the National
Association of Colored Women, in Washington, D.C.
1955 -- First African-American controlled and managed
Wall Street investment Company opens.
1967 -- Chief Albert Luthuli, of South Africa, wins the Nobel
Peace Prize.
22nd 1861 -- President Lincoln reads 1st draft of Emancipation
Proclamation to Congress.
1902 -- Asa P. Spaulding, President of the North Carolina
Mutual Life Insurance Company, is born.
1939 -- Jane Brolin, is appointed to the Domestic Relations
Court, becoming the 1st female African-American
judge.
1967 -- The beginning of the Detroit uprising.
23rd 1924 -- Townsend"Sonny"Brewster, playwright and activist,
is born.
1954 -- Charles Bush is appointed the 1st African-American
Page in the United States Supreme Court.
24th 1893 -- Charles S. Johnson, educator, is born.
1954 -- Dr. Mary Church Terrell, 1st African-American to
serve on the Washington, D.C., Board of
Education, dies in Washington, D. C.
25th 1778 -- The 1st African-American Baptist Church in
America is organized by 8 slaves in Silver Bluff,
S.C.
1943 -- The 1st Warship named for an African-American,
The Leonard Roy Harmon, launched in Quincy, MA.
1970 -- Charles Gordone wins Pulitizer Prize for No Place
To Be Somebody.
1970 -- Johnny Hodges(of Cambridge, MA.), Duke Ellington
1st chair Sax player, dies(b.1904).
1990 -- Earl Graves and Magic Johnson purchase the
largest minority controlled Pepsi-Cola franchise, in
Washington, D.C.
26th 1847 -- Liberia gains its independence.
1865 -- Catholic priest Patrick Francis Healy becomes the
1st African-American to earn a Ph.D. degree.
1956 -- Fidel Castro and forces attack Moncado Barracks
1963 -- Defense Department issues directive ordering
military services to protect the civil rights of
servicemen on and off the base.
27th 1832 -- Boston Black women form African-American
Female Intelligence Society.
1898 -- Civil rights Activist, Audley 'Queen Mother' Moore,
is born in Los Angeles, California.
1919 -- The beginning of the Chicago Riots.
1962 -- The Reverand Dr. Martin Luther King, is jailed
again in Albany, Georgia, as demonstrations
continue.
28th 1868 -- The 14th Amendment to the United States
Constitution is ratified, giving African-Americans
the right to vote.
1903 -- Maggie Lena Walker founds the Saint Luke Penny
Savings Bank, becoming 1st female bank
president.
1915 -- The 1st United States Marines land in Haiti.
29th 1802 -- Alexander Dumas(pere/the father), French novelist
dramatist{The Three Musketeers,The Count of
Monte Christo, is born.
1816 -- Fort Negro is destroyed in Appalachicola.
1866 -- Congress made African-American Regiments a
part of the United States Army.
1895 -- The 1st National Convention of African-American
Women is held in Boston, Massachusetts.
1909 -- Criminal novelist, Chester Himes, creator of the
fictional Dectectives, 'Cotten Ed' and Gravedigger
Jones, in such novels as, Cotten Comes to
Harlem, is born(d.1980).
30th 1822 -- James Varrick becomes the 1st bishop of the
African Methodist Episcopal Church of Zion.
1936 -- Buddy Guy, blues guitarist and vocalist, is born.
1945 -- Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., is elected to Congress
Harlem, New York.
1964 -- The Federal Court in Atlanta, upheld a key
section of the Civil Rights Act.
31st 1874 -- Father Patrick Healy, The 1st African-American
to earn a P.hD, is appointed president of
Georgetown University, in Washington D.C.
1921 -- Whitney Moore Young, Jr., Executive Director of
the National Urban League from 1961 to his
death in1971, is born.