BackStory is a weekly public podcast hosted by U.S. historians Ed Ayers, Brian Balogh, Nathan Connolly and Joanne Freeman. We're based in Charlottesville, Va. at Virginia Humanities. There’s the history you had to learn, and the history you want to learn - that’s where BackStory comes in. Each week BackStory takes a topic that people are talking about and explores it through the lens of American history. Through stories, interviews, and conversations with our listeners, BackStory makes histo ...
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Learn something new every day! Everything Everywhere Daily is a daily podcast for Intellectually Curious People. Host Gary Arndt tells the stories of interesting people, places, and things from around the world and throughout history. Gary is an accomplished world traveler, travel photographer, and polymath. Topics covered include history, science, mathematics, anthropology, archeology, geography, and culture. Past history episodes have dealt with ancient Rome, Phoenicia, Persia, Greece, Chi ...
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An award-winning cannabis podcast for women, by women. Hear joyful stories and useful advice about cannabis for health, well-being, and fun—especially for needs specific to women like stress, sleep, and sex. We cover everything from: What’s the best weed for sex? Can I use CBD for menstrual cramps? What are the effects of the Harlequin strain or Gelato strain? And, why do we prefer to call it “cannabis” instead of “marijuana”? We also hear from you: your first time buying legal weed, and how ...
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(Apple's Best of 2018) In-depth conversations with people at the top of their game. Jordan Harbinger unpacks guests' wisdom into practical nuggets you can use to impact your work, life, and relationships. Learn from leaders (Ray Dalio, Simon Sinek, Mark Cuban), entertainers (Moby, Tip "T.I." Harris, Dennis Quaid), scientists (Neil deGrasse Tyson, Bill Nye), athletes (Kobe Bryant, Dennis Rodman, Tony Hawk) and an eclectic array of fascinating minds, from art forgers and arms traffickers to sp ...
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An investigative podcast hosted by world-renowned literary critic and publishing insider Bethanne Patrick. Book bans are on the rise across America. With the rise of social media, book publishers are losing their power as the industry gatekeepers. More and more celebrities and influencers are publishing books with ghostwriters. Writing communities are splintering because members are at cross purposes about their mission. Missing Pages is an investigative podcast about the book publishing ind ...
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A weekly podcast tracing the history of the Roman Empire, beginning with Aeneas's arrival in Italy and ending with the exile of Romulus Augustulus, last Emperor of the Western Roman Empire. Now complete!
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TED is a nonprofit devoted to ideas worth spreading. On this video feed, you'll find TED Talks to inspire, intrigue and stir the imagination from some of the world's leading thinkers and doers, speaking from the stage at TED conferences, TEDx events and partner events around the world. This podcast is also available in high-def video and audio-only formats.
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As She Rises brings together local poets and activists from throughout North America to depict the effects of climate change on their home and their people. Each episode carries the listener to a new place through a collection of voices, local recordings and soundscapes. Stories span from the Louisiana Bayou, to the tundras of Alaska to the drying bed of the Colorado River. Centering the voices of native women and women of color, As She Rises personalizes the elusive magnitude of climate cha ...
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Smart People Podcast is a biweekly, interview-based podcast that features today's most well respected thought leaders engaging in authentic, insightful conversation for the benefit of the listener. The host, Chris Stemp, and his co-host/producer Jon Rojas, utilize their insatiable curiosity and relatable charm to provoke their guests into giving the interview of a lifetime. Every single guest has achieved a high level of recognition within their arena and in doing so has collected a wealth o ...
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The Big Pitch with Jimmy Carr
1 Phil Wang Pitches Psychological Thriller Starring WHO?! 24:35
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LikedIt’s the very first episode of The Big Pitch with Jimmy Carr and our first guest is Phil Wang! And Phil’s subgenre is…This Place is Evil. We’re talking psychological torture, we’re talking gory death scenes, we’re talking Lorraine Kelly?! The Big Pitch with Jimmy Carr is a brand new comedy podcast where each week a different celebrity guest pitches an idea for a film based on one of the SUPER niche sub-genres on Netflix. From ‘Steamy Crime Movies from the 1970s’ to ‘Australian Dysfunctional Family Comedies Starring A Strong Female Lead’, our celebrity guests will pitch their wacky plot, their dream cast, the marketing stunts, and everything in between. By the end of every episode, Jimmy Carr, Comedian by night / “Netflix Executive” by day, will decide whether the pitch is greenlit or condemned to development hell! Listen on all podcast platforms and watch on the Netflix Is A Joke YouTube Channel . The Big Pitch is a co-production by Netflix and BBC Studios Audio. Jimmy Carr is an award-winning stand-up comedian and writer, touring his brand-new show JIMMY CARR: LAUGHS FUNNY throughout the USA from May to November this year, as well as across the UK and Europe, before hitting Australia and New Zealand in early 2026. All info and tickets for the tour are available at JIMMYCARR.COM Production Coordinator: Becky Carewe-Jeffries Production Manager: Mabel Finnegan-Wright Editor: Stuart Reid Producer: Pete Strauss Executive Producer: Richard Morris Executive Producers for Netflix: Kathryn Huyghue, Erica Brady, and David Markowitz Set Design: Helen Coyston Studios: Tower Bridge Studios Make Up: Samantha Coughlan Cameras: Daniel Spencer Sound: Charlie Emery Branding: Tim Lane Photography: James Hole…
March 23 - BlackFacts.com Black History Fact of the Day
Manage episode 288115482 series 2885711
Content provided by BlackFacts.com, Nicole Franklin, and Bryant Monteilh. All podcast content including episodes, graphics, and podcast descriptions are uploaded and provided directly by BlackFacts.com, Nicole Franklin, and Bryant Monteilh or their podcast platform partner. If you believe someone is using your copyrighted work without your permission, you can follow the process outlined here https://ppacc.player.fm/legal.
On March 23, Patricia Roberts Harris passed away.
She was the first African American woman named to a U.S. ambassadorship and the first as well to serve in a presidential cabinet.
In 1963, President John F. Kennedy appointed her co-chairman of the National Women's Committee for Civil Rights. She worked in Lyndon Johnson's presidential campaign. Soon after his victory, President Johnson appointed her Ambassador to Luxembourg from 1965 to 1967.
BlackFacts.com is the Internet's longest running Black History Encyclopedia. Our podcast summarizes the vast stories of Black history in daily episodes known as Black Facts Of The Day™.
Since 1997, BlackFacts.com has been serving up Black History Facts on a daily basis to millions of users and followers on the web and via social media.
Learn Black History. Teach Black History.
For more Black Facts, join Black Facts Nation at BlackFacts.com/join.
Because Black History is 365 Days a Year, and Black Facts Matter!
152 episodes
ShareManage episode 288115482 series 2885711
Content provided by BlackFacts.com, Nicole Franklin, and Bryant Monteilh. All podcast content including episodes, graphics, and podcast descriptions are uploaded and provided directly by BlackFacts.com, Nicole Franklin, and Bryant Monteilh or their podcast platform partner. If you believe someone is using your copyrighted work without your permission, you can follow the process outlined here https://ppacc.player.fm/legal.
On March 23, Patricia Roberts Harris passed away.
She was the first African American woman named to a U.S. ambassadorship and the first as well to serve in a presidential cabinet.
In 1963, President John F. Kennedy appointed her co-chairman of the National Women's Committee for Civil Rights. She worked in Lyndon Johnson's presidential campaign. Soon after his victory, President Johnson appointed her Ambassador to Luxembourg from 1965 to 1967.
BlackFacts.com is the Internet's longest running Black History Encyclopedia. Our podcast summarizes the vast stories of Black history in daily episodes known as Black Facts Of The Day™.
Since 1997, BlackFacts.com has been serving up Black History Facts on a daily basis to millions of users and followers on the web and via social media.
Learn Black History. Teach Black History.
For more Black Facts, join Black Facts Nation at BlackFacts.com/join.
Because Black History is 365 Days a Year, and Black Facts Matter!
152 episodes
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BlackFacts.com presents the black fact of the day for July 5. Frederick Douglass gave his speech "What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?". He was an African American abolitionist, orator, newspaper publisher, and author. He became the first Black U.S. marshal. Douglass was born into slavery on the Eastern Shore of the Chesapeake Bay in Talbot County, Maryland. When he was seven years old, he was sent to his master, Captain Aaron Anthony, at a nearby plantation. On September 3, 1838, Douglass escaped from slavery. With identification borrowed from a free Black seaman, he traveled to New York City. He remained an avid reader throughout his adult life. In 1847, he began publishing his own abolitionist newsletter, the North Star. He became a powerful orator, often traveling six months out of the year to give lectures on abolition. When radical abolitionists, under the motto "No Union with Slaveholders", criticized Douglass's willingness to engage in dialogue with slave owners, he replied: "I would unite with anybody to do right and with nobody to do wrong." In July 5, 1852, he delivered his speech at an event commemorating the signing of the Declaration of Independence, held at Corinthian Hall in Rochester, New York. The speech explores the constitutional and values-based arguments against the continued existence of Slavery in the United States. Learn black history, teach black history at blackfacts.com…
BlackFacts.com presents the black fact of the day for July 4. Marian Anderson and Ralph Bunche receive the first Medals of Freedom. She was an American singer, and an important figure in the struggle for African-American artists to overcome racial prejudice. Bunche was an American political scientist, diplomat, member of the United Nations for more than two decades, activist of the US civil rights movement, and the first African American and first person of African descent to be awarded a Nobel Prize. In 1955, Anderson became the first African American singer to perform as a member of the Metropolitan Opera in New York City. Bunche was one of the leaders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) for more than 20 years. The Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Gold Medal are the highest civilian awards of the United States. It was established in 1963 by President John F. Kennedy, superseding the Medal of Freedom that was established by President Harry S. Truman in 1945 to honor civilian service during World War II. JFK’s assassination in November meant that he was not alive to present the awards at the ceremony that December. His successor, Lyndon B. Johnson, presented them in his place. Learn black history, teach black history at blackfacts.com…
BlackFacts.com presents the black fact of the day for July 3. Jackie Robinson becomes the first African American to be inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame. He was an American professional baseball player who became the first African American to play in Major League Baseball (MLB) in the modern era. After demonstrating exceptional athletic ability during high school and junior college, he excelled at baseball, football, basketball, and track at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA). He left UCLA in 1941 and briefly played professional football before being drafted into the U.S. Army. During his service, he refused to sit at the back of a bus and was threatened with a court-martial, but the charges were dropped and he was given an honorable discharge in 1945. Robinson made his major league debut in April 1947. The chief problem he had to overcome was controlling his fiery temper in the face of continual racial slurs from the crowds and other ballplayers, including some of his own teammates. After retiring from baseball early in 1957, Robinson engaged in business and in civil rights activism. He was a spokesperson for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and made appearances with Martin Luther King, Jr. Robinson's major league debut brought an end to approximately sixty years of segregation in professional baseball, known as the baseball color line. Robinson's character, his use of nonviolence, and his talent challenged the traditional basis of segregation that had then marked many other aspects of American life. Learn black history, teach black history at blackfacts.com…
BlackFacts.com presents the black fact of the day for July 2. Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act. In the landmark 1954 case Brown v. Board of Education, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that racial segregation in schools was unconstitutional. The 10 years that followed saw great strides for the African American civil rights movement, as non-violent demonstrations won thousands of supporters to the cause. Led by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the Civil Rights movement had been gathering force. John F. Kennedy made passage of a new civil rights bill one of the platforms of his successful 1960 presidential campaign. In early 1964, House supporters overcame the Rules Committee obstacle by threatening to send the bill to the floor without committee approval. Passage of the act was not easy. House opposition bottled up the bill in the House Rules Committee. In the Senate, Southern Democratic opponents attempted to talk the bill to death. The act outlawed segregation in businesses such as theaters, restaurants, and hotels. It banned discriminatory practices in employment and ended segregation in public places such as swimming pools, libraries, and public schools. This document was the most sweeping civil rights legislation since Reconstruction. Learn black history, teach black history at blackfacts.com…
BlackFacts.com presents the black fact of the day for July 1st. Roland Hayes named soloist with Boston Symphony Orchestra. He was the first African American singer to achieve success on the classical concert stage. Hayes was born in Curryville, Georgia, to Fanny and William Hayes, who were former slaves. He wanted an education, but he had to drop out of school to help support his family and worked at many jobs. He moved to Louisville, Kentucky, where he found a job singing at a silent movie theater. He had to sing offstage so that people could hear his voice but not see his skin color. To earn money he went on a tour of black churches and colleges in the South. In 1917 he announced his second concert, which would be held in Boston's Symphony Hall. In 1920 Hayes performed his first European concert in London, England. While in London he received a message from King George and Queen Mary of England, requesting that he perform for them. He toured Europe several more times, singing in seven different languages, and by the late 1920s he had become the highest-paid tenor in the world. After the 1930s, Hayes stopped touring in Europe because the change in politics made it unfavorable to African Americans. Learn black history, teach black history at blackfacts.com…
BlackFacts.com presents the black fact of the day for June 30. Lena Horne was born. She was an African-American dancer, actress, Grammy-winning singer, and civil rights activist. Horne left school at age 16 to help support her ailing mother and became a dancer at the Cotton Club in Harlem, New York City. She was discovered by producer John Hammond, and soon after she performed in a solo show at Carnegie Hall. A remarkably charismatic entertainer, Horne was one of the most popular singers of her time. One of her albums, Lena Horne at the Waldorf-Astoria, was a longtime best seller, and her first featured performance on Broadway. She also was noted for her work with civil rights and political organizations; as an actress, she refused to play roles that stereotyped African American women. In 1984 Horne received a Kennedy Center honor for lifetime contribution to the arts, and in 1989 she was given a Grammy Award for lifetime achievement. "Stormy Weather", a well-received biography of Horne's life, was published in 2009 and written by James Gavin. Horne also published her own memoir, "Lena", in 1965. Learn black history, teach black history at blackfacts.com…
BlackFacts.com presents the black fact of the day for June 29. NAACP chairman S.G. Spottswood criticize Nixon's administration. Stephen Gill Spottswood was born in Boston, Massachusetts. He went on to Albright College, earning a B.A. in history in 1917; Gordon Divinity School; and Yale Divinity School, where he earned his doctorate. He joined the NAACP in 1919 and was an active voice for racial equality throughout his adult life. He became president of the NAACP's Washington branch in 1947 and was elected to the national board of the NAACP in 1955, vice-president in 1959, and finally chairman in 1961, a post he held until 1975. Spottswood earned a reputation as an outspoken critic of racial injustice and several times attracted press coverage for his political censures. His most prominent criticism was directed at Richard Nixon and his administration's treatment of African-Americans, calling it "anti-Negro". At the following year's convention, Spottswood used his keynote address to soften the NAACP's stance on Nixon. Newly unearthed recordings show former President Richard Nixon mentioned racist language in conversations with his close associates. Learn black history, teach black history at blackfacts.com…
BlackFacts.com presents the black fact of the day for June 28. The U.S. Supreme Court invalidated the use of racial quotas for university applications. The medical school at the University of California, as part of the university’s affirmative action program, had reserved 16 percent of its admission places for minority applicants. Allan Bakke, a white California man who had twice unsuccessfully applied for admission to the medical school, filed suit against the university. Citing evidence that his grades and test scores surpassed those of many minority students who had been accepted for admission, Bakke charged that he had suffered unfair “reverse discrimination” on the basis of race. The Supreme Court, agreed that the university’s use of strict racial quotas was unconstitutional and ordered that the medical school admit Bakke. Although the ruling legalized the use of affirmative action, in subsequent decisions during the next several decades the court limited the scope of such programs, and several U.S. states prohibited affirmative action programs based on race. Regents of University of California v. Bakke established a pragmatic means of reconciling well-intentioned quota and affirmative action programs with the Constitution's zealous protection of equality. Learn black history, teach black history at blackfacts.com…
BlackFacts.com presents the black fact of the day for June 27. Frederick Jones invents the ticket dispensing machine. He was an U.S. inventor credited with more than 60 patents. After a challenging childhood, Jones taught himself mechanical and electrical engineering, inventing a range of devices relating to refrigeration, sound, and automobiles. In the late 1920s, Jones designed a series of devices for the developing movie industry, which adapted silent movie projectors to use talking movie stock. He also developed an apparatus for the movie box office that delivers tickets and returns change to customers. In 1935, he invented the first automatic refrigeration system for long-haul trucks and railroad cars. This system eliminated the risk of food spoilage during long-distance shipping trips. His invention radically altered American consumer's eating habits; now people could eat fresh produce across the United States during the middle of summer or winter. Over the course of his career, Jones received more than 60 patents. While the majority pertained to refrigeration technologies, others related to X-ray machines, engines and sound equipment. He became the first African American elected to the American Society of Refrigeration Engineers. Learn black history, teach black history at blackfacts.com…
BlackFacts.com presents the black fact of the day for June 26. Sit-in demonstrations and passive resistance began in Cairo, Illinois. Despite Illinois’s relatively liberal reputation, Cairo, a small city far south from Chicago, was thoroughly segregated and violently racist. Local youths formed the Cairo Nonviolent Freedom Committee (CNVFC) and invited Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) to go to the small city to initiate protests. Soon after, CNVFC launched “Operation Open City,” with an eleven-point plan to segregate all areas of civic life, including schools, housing, and employment opportunities. But most of its energy focused on desegregating public accommodations, including several local restaurants, the public swimming pool, and a roller skating rink. Their efforts met fierce white resistance. By August, the young activists had successfully integrated most of the city’s restaurants, though proprietors continued to harass Black patrons in other ways, like overcharging and providing poor service. Illinois Governor, Otto Kerner, Jr., ordered the city to desegregate in accordance with state law. The violence signaled the end of segregated public accommodations in Cairo. Economic and political discrimination continued, however. Learn black history, teach black history at blackfacts.com…
BlackFacts.com presents the black fact of the day for June 25. Sonia Sotomayor was born. She is an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, the first woman of color, first Hispanic, and first Latina member of the Court. Sotomayor was raised in a housing project in the Bronx. After the death of her father, her mother worked long hours as a nurse to support the family. She graduated summa cum laude from Princeton University before attending Yale Law School on a scholarship. In 1979, Sotomayor was awarded a Juris Doctor. She was admitted to the New York Bar the following year. When President Bill Clinton nominated Sotomayor to be a judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in 1997, Republican senators delayed her appointment for more than a year because of their concerns that the position might lead to a Supreme Court nomination. In May 2009 Pres. Barack Obama nominated Sotomayor to the Supreme Court in order to fill the vacancy left by departing justice David Souter. Sotomayor’s confirmation hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee in July 2009 went smoothly, and the following month she was confirmed (68–31) by the Senate. During her tenure on the Supreme Court, Sotomayor has been identified with concern for the rights of defendants, calls for reform of the criminal justice system, and making impassioned dissents on issues of race, gender and ethnic identity. Learn black history, teach black history at blackfacts.com…
BlackFacts.com presents the black fact of the day for June 24. John R. Lynch became first African-American to preside over deliberations of a national political party. Born into slavery in Louisiana, he became free in 1863 under the Emancipation Proclamation. He became active in the Republican Party by the age of 20. Although too young to participate as a delegate, he attended the state's constitutional convention of 1867, studying its developments closely. At the age of 26 in 1872, Lynch was elected as the youngest member of the US Congress from Mississippi's 6th congressional district, as part of the first generation of African-American Congressmen. Lynch introduced many bills and argued on their behalf. Perhaps his greatest effort was in the long debate supporting the Civil Rights Act of 1875 to ban discrimination in public accommodations. He was one of seven African-American Congressmen present, who all testified in 1874 as to personal and known experience of the effects of discrimination in this area. In 1884, Lynch became the first African American to chair a political party's National Convention. Learn black history, teach black history at blackfacts.com…
BlackFacts.com presents the black fact of the day for June 23. Wilma Rudolph was born. She was an American sprinter, the first American woman to win three track-and-field gold medals in a single Olympics. Physically disabled for much of her early life, Rudolph wore a leg brace until she was twelve years old. Because there was little medical care available to African American residents of Clarksville in the 1940s, Rudolph's parents sought treatment for her at the historically black Meharry Medical College in Nashville, Tennessee, about 50 miles away. She attended Tennessee State University from 1957 to 1961. At age 16 she competed in the 1956 Olympic Games at Melbourne, Australia, winning a bronze medal in the 4 × 100-metre relay race. At the 1960 Summer Olympics in Rome, Italy, Rudolph competed in three events on a cinder track in Rome's Stadio Olimpico: the 100- and 200-meter sprints, as well as the 4 × 100-meter relays. She won a gold medal in each of these events. These games launched Rudolph into the public spotlight and the media cast her as America's athletic "leading lady" and a "queen," with praises of her athletic accomplishments. Her strikingly fluid style made Rudolph a particular favorite with spectators and journalists. Learn black history, teach black history at blackfacts.com…
BlackFacts.com presents the black fact of the day for June 22. Arthur Ashe leads UCLA to the NCAA tennis championship. Ashe was coached and mentored by Robert Walter Johnson at his tennis summer-camp home in Lynchburg, Virginia. Johnson helped fine-tune Ashe's game and taught him the importance of racial socialization through sportsmanship, etiquette and the composure that would later become an Ashe hallmark. In 1958, Ashe became the first African American to play in the Maryland boys' championships. It was also his first integrated tennis competition. In 1963, he became the first black player ever selected for the United States Davis Cup team. In 1965, ranked the number 3 player in the United States, Ashe won both the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) singles title and the doubles title (with Ian Crookenden of New Zealand), helping UCLA win the team NCAA tennis championship. His criticism of South African apartheid racial policy led to denial of permission to play in that country’s open tournament, and, as a consequence, on March 23, 1970, South Africa was excluded from Davis Cup competition. He was the only black man ever to win the singles title at Wimbledon, the US Open, and the Australian Open. After his retirement, Ashe took on many roles, including writing for Time magazine and The Washington Post, commentating for ABC Sports and HBO from the early 1980s. Learn black history, teach black history at blackfacts.com…
1 BlackFacts Presents - The History of Juneteenth 5:54
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Play Later Play Later Lists Like LikedJUNETEENTH - A Celebration of Freedom. Juneteenth (a portmanteau of June and nineteenth) is also known as Freedom Day, Jubilee Day, Liberation Day, and Emancipation Day. It is a holiday celebrating the emancipation of those who had been enslaved in the United States. It is now celebrated annually on the 19th of June throughout the United States. HISTORY During the American Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on September 22, 1862. It became effective on January 1, 1863. This Proclamation declared that all enslaved persons in the Confederate States of America in rebellion and not in Union hands were freed. More isolated geographically, planters and other slaveholders had migrated into Texas from eastern states to escape the fighting, and many brought enslaved people with them. Although most lived in rural areas, more than 1,000 resided in both Galveston and Houston by 1860. By 1865, there were an estimated 250,000 enslaved people in Texas. Despite the surrender of General Robert E. Lee at Appomattox Court House on April 9, 1865, the western Army of the Trans-Mississippi did not surrender until June 2. On Monday, June 19, 1865, Union Major General Gordon Granger arrived to Galveston, Texas, to enforce the emancipation of its slaves and oversee a peaceful transition of power. The Texas Historical Commission and Galveston Historical Foundation report that Granger’s men marched Throughout Galveston reading General Order No 3: “ The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free. This involves an absolute... ... equality of personal rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves, and the connection heretofore existing between them becomes... ...that between employer and hired labour. The freedmen are advised to remain quietly at their present homes and work for wages. They are informed that they will not... ...be allowed to collect at military posts and that they will not be supported in idleness either there or elsewhere.” It was from that moment that Juneteenth would be born. EARLY CELEBRATIONS Formerly enslaved people in Galveston celebrated after the announcement. The following year, freedmen in Texas organized the first of what became the annual celebration of "Jubilee Day." On January 2, 1866, a Galveston newspaper, reported on an Emancipation Celebration: “ The colored people of Galveston celebrated their emancipation from slavery yesterday by a procession. Notwithstanding the storm some eight hundred or a thousand men, women and children took part in the demonstration.” Flake’s Bulletin, 2 January 1866. Early celebrations were used as political rallies to give voting instructions to newly freed slaves. Early independence celebrations often occurred on January 1 or 4. OFFICIAL RECOGNITION In the late 1970s the Texas Legislature declared Juneteenth a “holiday of significance, particularly to the blacks of Texas", becoming the first state to establish Juneteenth as a state holiday. The bill passed through the Texas Legislature in 1979 and was officially made a state holiday on January 1, 1980. Recognition of Juneteenth varies across the United States. It is not officially recognized by the federal government, although the Senate unanimously passed... ...a simple resolution in 2018 in honour of the day, and legislation has been introduced in Congress to make it either a "national day of observance" or a full-scale federal holiday. The only three states yet to legally recognize Juneteenth as either a state or ceremonial holiday are Hawaii, North Dakota, and South Dakota. In 2020, Juneteenth was formally recognized by New York City (as an annual official city holiday and public school holiday, starting in 2021) CELEBRATIONS The holiday is considered the "longest-running African-American holiday" and has been called "America’s second Independence Day". Juneteenth is usually celebrated on the third Saturday in June. It was common for former slaves and their descendants to make a pilgrimage to Galveston. Observance today is primarily in local celebrations. In many places Juneteenth has become a multicultural holiday, Including lectures and exhibitions on African-American culture. Traditions include public readings of the Emancipation Proclamation, singing traditional songs and reading of works by noted African-American writers. Celebrations include picnics, rodeos, street fairs, cookouts, family reunions, park parties, historical reenactments, blues festivals and Miss Juneteenth contests. Historian Mitch Kachun considers that celebrations of the end of slavery have three goals: " to Celebrate, to Educate, and to Agitate ." To learn more about black history visit www.blackfacts.com.…
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BlackFacts.com presents the black fact of the day for June 21. Painter Henry Ossawa Tanner was born. He was an American artist and the first African-American painter to gain international acclaim. After a childhood spent largely in Philadelphia, Tanner began an art career in earnest in 1876,painting harbour scenes, landscapes, and animals from the Philadelphia Zoo. Although many artists refused to accept an African-American apprentice, in 1879 Tanner enrolled at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia, becoming the only black student. In 1891 he traveled to Paris, France, to study at the Académie Julian. He also joined the American Art Students Club. Paris was a welcome escape for Tanner; within French art circles the issue of race mattered little. In 1893 on a short return visit to the United States, Tanner painted his most famous work, The Banjo Lesson, while in Philadelphia. Tanner was not limited to one specific approach to painting and drawing. His works reflect at times meticulous attention to detail and loose, expressive brushstrokes in others. Tanner's Sand Dunes at Sunset hangs in the Green Room at the White House; it is the first painting by an African-American artist to have been purchased for the permanent collection of the White House. Learn black history, teach black history at blackfacts.com…
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BlackFacts.com presents the black fact of the day for June 20. Harry Belafonte became the first African American to win an Emmy award. As one of the most successful African-American pop stars in history, he was dubbed the “King of Calypso” for popularizing the Caribbean musical style with an international audience in the 1950s. He was an early supporter of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s and 1960s, and one of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s confidants. He financed the 1961 Freedom Rides, supported voter registration drives, and helped to organize the 1963 March on Washington. Throughout his career, he has been an advocate for political and humanitarian causes, such as the anti-apartheid movement and USA for Africa. Since 1987, he has been a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador. He was awarded an Emmy for his television special, Tonight Show with Harry Belafonte. In 1989, he received the Kennedy Center Honors. Learn black history, teach black history at blackfacts.com…
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BlackFacts.com presents the black fact of the day for June 19. Solidarity Day March In November 1967 civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., and the staff of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) met and decided to launch a Poor People’s Campaign to highlight and find solutions to many of the problems facing the country’s poor. The Poor People’s Campaign was still in the planning stages when King was assassinated in April 1968. The plan for the march was that protestors would come together in Washington, D.C., and demonstrate daily from May 14 to June 24, 1968. June 19th was declared Solidarity Day, and a rally was held, attracting between 50–100,000 people. Addresses were made by Ralph Abernathy, Hubert Humphrey, Eugene McCarthy, Walter Reuther as well as Coretta Scott-King. In 1969, a Poor People's Campaign delegation, including Abernathy, met with President Nixon and asked him to address hunger and malnutrition. The 2nd Solidarity March came near the 10 year anniversary of the first and drew between 250,000 and 325,000 people. Learn black history, teach black history at blackfacts.com…
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BlackFacts.com presents the black fact of the day for June 18. W.H. Richardson patents Baby Buggy. He was born in Baltimore, Maryland, and he made a huge improvement to the baby carriage. Richardson decided to create a stroller to be shaped more like a symmetrical basket, rather than a shell, as it was back then. This new design made it easier for parents and nannies to move the carriage around 360 degrees, compared to only 90 degrees before. The big part of Richardson’s change to the baby carriage is that it was now reversible, making it possible to have anyone pushing the baby face them instead of facing in the opposite direction. The use of prams became widespread among all economic classes by the 1900s. Many of Richardson's design modification are still in use today. Learn black history, teach black history at blackfacts.com…
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BlackFacts.com presents the black fact of the day for June 17. Tuskegee Boycott began. The issue of the boycott was segregation and voting rights. The voting districts for the city of Tuskegee were changed dramatically to prevent black citizens from electing local officials. The Tuskegee Civic Association (TCA), a predominantly black organization working for civil rights, challenged the new district boundaries and took it to court. The leader of the Civic Association was Dr. Charles Gomillion, a Tuskegee Institute professor. As a strategy to gain victory, he told the citizens to "Trade with your friends". This had an immediate result on the local businesses because even though blacks were to enter stores from the rear, and had to wait for white customers before they were served, they were significant consumers of goods in Tuskegee. The Boycott also resulted in local Macon County black businesses thriving and multiplying. It effectively created devastating economic consequences for Whites, who preferred to go out of business than give Blacks the right to vote. The use of redrawing voting district lines was ruled illegal and became a landmark case for the United States Civil Rights Movement. Participants in the Tuskegee boycott engaged in unwavering civil activism to end the expulsion of black city residents and re-establish their voting rights. Learn black history, teach black history at blackfacts.com…
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BlackFacts.com presents the black fact of the day for June 16. Kenneth A. Gibson became the first African American mayor of Newark. He entered politics in the 1960s, during the Civil Rights Movement, by joining the National Urban League, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). Gibson ran for mayor in 1966. He joined the mayoral race only six weeks before the election. Mayor Hugh J. Addonizio was reelected, but Gibson got more votes than expected. Gibson would spend the next four years preparing for the 1970 mayoral campaign. In July of 1967, African Americans in Newark rebelled when a black taxi driver was arrested and beaten by white police officers. Over five days, 26 people died, but the violence sent a message that Newark’s African Americans were no longer willing to be treated as second-class citizens. In 1970, Gibson ran for office again and won. He became the first African American mayor of a Northeastern city. He inspired other African Americans to enter politics. Following his term in office, other Northeastern cities like Philadelphia, Baltimore, and New York have elected black mayors. Since leaving city government, Gibson has headed Gibson Associates, a consulting firm that advises building developers and investment bankers on public financing and other construction management issues. Learn black history, teach black history at blackfacts.com…
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BlackFacts.com presents the black fact of the day for June 15. Henry Ossian Flipper became the first African American to graduate from the United States Military Academy at West Point. He was born into slavery in Thomasville, Georgia, the eldest of five brothers. His mother, Isabelle Flipper, and his father, Festus Flipper, a shoemaker, and carriage-trimmer were owned by Ephraim G. Ponder, a wealthy slave dealer. Flipper attended Atlanta University during Reconstruction. There, as a freshman, Representative James C. Freeman appointed him to attend West Point, where four other black cadets were already attending. The small group had a difficult time at the academy, where they were rejected by white students. Nevertheless, Flipper persevered, and in 1877, became the first of the group to graduate, earning a commission as a second lieutenant in the U.S. Army cavalry. He was assigned to the 10th Cavalry Regiment, one of the four all-black "buffalo soldier" regiments in the Army, and became the first black officer to command regular troops in the U.S. Army. In 1881, while serving at Fort Davis, Flipper's commanding officer accused him of embezzling $3,791.77 from commissary funds.. A court-martial found him not guilty of embezzlement but convicted him of conduct unbecoming an officer and ordered him dismissed from the Army. In 1976, the Army granted him an honorable discharge, and in 1999, President Bill Clinton issued him a full pardon. After his discharge was changed, a bust of Flipper was unveiled at West Point. Since then, an annual Henry O. Flipper Award has been granted to graduating cadets at the academy who exhibit "leadership, self-discipline, and perseverance in the face of unusual difficulties. Learn black history, teach black history at blackfacts.com…
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BlackFacts.com presents the black fact of the day for June 14. William H. Gray was elected Democratic Whip of the House of Representatives. He graduated from Simon Gratz High School in 1959 and enrolled in Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, majoring in sociology. In 1972, Gray succeeded his father as the senior minister at Bright Hope Baptist Church in Philadelphia, succeeding not only his father but also his grandfather, who had founded the 4,000-member church. He was elected as a Democrat to represent Philadelphia in the United States House of Representatives in 1978. Throughout his tenure, he was dedicated to promoting civil rights and economic advancement in Philadelphia, the United States, and the world. With his ascent to Majority Whip, the third-ranking leadership position in the House, Gray became the highest-ranking African American in congressional history. Outside politics he was also a businessman who has been a director at Dell, J.P. Morgan, Chase & Co., Prudential Financial Inc., Rockwell International Corporation, Visteon Corporation and Pfizer. Learn black history, teach black history at blackfacts.com…
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BlackFacts.com presents the black fact of the day for June 13. Thurgood Marshall named the first African-American Court's justice. After being rejected by the University of Maryland Law School because he was not white, Marshall attended Howard University Law School; he received his degree in 1933, ranking first in his class. He established a private legal practice in Baltimore before founding the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, where he served as executive director. As an attorney, he successfully argued before the Court the case of Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (1954), which declared unconstitutional racial segregation in American public schools. In September 1961 Marshall was nominated to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit by President John F. Kennedy, but opposition from Southern senators delayed his confirmation for several months. Marshall’s nomination was confirmed (69–11) by the U.S. Senate on August 30, 1967. He served on the Court for the next 24 years, compiling a liberal record that included strong support for Constitutional protection of individual rights. Thurgood Marshall's Bible was used by Vice President Kamala Harris at her inauguration in Washington on January 20, 2021, when she was sworn into office. Learn black history, teach black history at blackfacts.com…
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BlackFacts.com presents the black fact of the day for June 12. Michael Jordan leads Chicago to 1st NBA Title. The Chicago Bulls defeated the Los Angeles Lakers 108-101 at the Great Western Forum to capture the NBA Finals in five games. It was the Bulls’ first-ever NBA title in their 25th anniversary season in the league. Jordan scored 30 points and teammate Scottie Pippen hit for 32. This was no easy task for the Bulls going up against the Lakers Big Three in Magic Johnson, Vlade Divac and James Worthy. This was just the beginning for Jordan and the Bulls dynasty. The Bulls would eventually win again in 1992 and 1993, marking the first such “three-peat” since the Celtics won eight straight from 1959-66. After Jordan retired in 1993 to join the White Sox, he came back in 1995. And beginning in the 1995-96 season another three-peat was cemented into the history books, with Jordan leading the Bulls to three consecutive championships from 1996-98. His biography on the official NBA website states: "By acclamation, Michael Jordan is the greatest basketball player of all time." Learn black history, teach black history at blackfacts.com…
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BlackFacts.com presents the black fact of the day for June 11. Kennedy's Report to the American People on Civil Rights. It was a speech on civil rights, delivered on radio and television by President John F. Kennedy from the Oval Office in which he proposed legislation that would later become the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Kennedy was initially cautious in his support of civil rights and desegregation in the United States. As his term continued, African Americans became increasingly impatient with their lack of social progress and racial tensions escalated. His administration had sent National Guard troops to accompany the first black students admitted to the University of Mississippi and the University of Alabama. In the speech, Kennedy announced that he would be sending civil rights legislation to Congress; that legislation was passed after his death and signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson. Kennedy called Americans to recognize civil rights as a moral cause to which all people need to contribute and was "as clear as the American Constitution." Martin Luther King, Jr., called the speech “one of the most eloquent, profound, and unequivocal pleas for Justice and Freedom of all men ever made by any President.” Learn black history, teach black history at blackfacts.com…
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BlackFacts.com presents the black fact of the day for June 10. Howlin' Wolf was born. Born as Chester Arthur Burnett, he was an American blues singer and composer who was one of the principal exponents of the urban blues style of Chicago. He was brought up on a cotton plantation, and the music he heard was the traditional tunes of the region. He started singing professionally when quite young and in the 1920s and ’30s performed throughout Mississippi, playing in small clubs. He accompanied himself on guitar and harmonica, but his main instrument was his guttural and emotionally suggestive voice, which gave his songs power and authenticity. After his first record, “Moanin’ at Midnight” (1951), became a hit, he moved to Chicago, where he, along with Muddy Waters, made the city a center for the transformation of the (acoustic) Mississippi Delta blues style into an electrically amplified style for urban audiences. Wolf traveled to Europe as part of the Chess blues revival series. His intense, energetic performances of brought him a new generation of blues-influenced rock ‘n’ roll fans. His work was known only to blues audiences until the Rolling Stones and other British and American rock stars of the 1960s and ’70s acknowledged his influence. Learn black history, teach black history at blackfacts.com…
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BlackFacts.com presents the black fact of the day for June 9. Oliver W. Hill became the 1st Black person elected to the city council in Richmond, Virginia. He was a prominent civil rights attorney. His work against racial discrimination helped end the doctrine of "separate but equal." Hill first practiced law in Roanoke, Virginia, before settling in Richmond in 1939. He joined the legal team of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Hill’s first civil rights victory was in 1940 when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that African American teachers had to be paid the same as white teachers. He served as an officer or on the board of many national, state, and local organizations, including the NAACP and the National Bar Association. In 1947, he first ran for the City Council of Richmond but came in 10th in a race for 9 seats. Hill ran again in 1949 and became the first African American on the City Council of Richmond since Reconstruction. He was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1999. Learn black history, teach black history at blackfacts.com…
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BlackFacts.com presents the black fact of the day for June 8. James Earl Ray, the suspect in Martin Luther King, Jr.'s assassination, was captured. On April 4, 1968, in Memphis, Martin Luther King Jr, was fatally wounded by a sniper’s bullet while standing on the balcony outside his second-story room at the Motel Lorraine. During the next several weeks, the rifle, eyewitness reports, and fingerprints on the weapon all implicated a single suspect: escaped convict James Earl Ray. In May 1968, a massive manhunt for Ray began. The FBI eventually determined that he had obtained a Canadian passport under a false identity, which at the time was relatively easy. On June 8, Scotland Yard investigators arrested Ray at a London airport. He was trying to fly to Belgium, with the eventual goal, he later admitted, of reaching Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). Extradited to the United States, Ray stood before a Memphis judge in March 1969 and pleaded guilty to King’s murder in order to avoid the electric chair. He was sentenced to 99 years in prison. During the 1990s, the widow and children of Martin Luther King, Jr., spoke publicly in support of Ray and his claims, calling him innocent and speculating about an assassination conspiracy involving the U.S. government and military. According to his family and friends, he was an outspoken racist who told them of his intent to kill King. Ray died in 1998. Learn black history, teach black history at blackfacts.com…
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BlackFacts.com presents the black fact of the day for June 7. Nikki Giovanni was born. She is an American poet, writer, commentator, activist, and educator. Giovanni grew up in Cincinnati, Ohio, and Knoxville, Tennessee, and in 1960 she entered Nashville’s Fisk University. By 1967, when she received a B.A., she was firmly committed to the civil rights movement and the concept of black power. Her experiences as a single mother then began to influence her poetry. Loneliness, thwarted hopes, and the theme of family affection became increasingly important in her writings during the 1970s. She returned to political concerns in "Those Who Ride the Night Winds" (1983), with dedications to black American heroes and heroines. For children, she wrote "Jimmy Grasshopper Versus the Ants" (2007) and "Rosa" (2005), a picture book about legendary civil rights figure Rosa Parks. She taught at various universities, including Virginia Tech. In 2007 the school was the site of a mass shooting. The gunman was a former student of Giovanni’s, and she had earlier alerted school authorities about his troubling behaviour. At a memorial service she gave a powerful reading of a poem she had written following the tragedy. Learn black history, teach black history at blackfacts.com…
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BlackFacts.com presents the black fact of the day for June 6. Marian Wright Edelman was born. She is an American attorney and civil rights activist who founded the Children’s Defense Fund in 1973. After work registering African American voters in Mississippi, she moved to New York City as a staff attorney for the Legal Defense and Educational Fund of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Edelman was the first African American woman admitted to The Mississippi Bar in 1964, and the first Black woman elected on the Yale board of trustees in 1971. In 1973, she founded the Children's Defense Fund as a voice for poor children, children of color, and children with disabilities. The organization has served as an advocacy and research center for children's issues, documenting the problems and possible solutions to children in need. She also worked to persuade United States Congress to overhaul foster care, support adoption, improve child care and protect children who are disabled, homeless, abused or neglected. Learn black history, teach black history at blackfacts.com…
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BlackFacts.com presents the black fact of the day for June 5. American Negro Theater was formed. It was an African American theatre company that was active in the Harlem district of New York City from 1940 to 1951. It provided professional training and critical exposure to African American actors, actresses, and playwrights by creating and producing plays concerning diverse aspects of African American life. It was established by two African Americans, the playwright Abram Hill and the actor Frederick O’Neal. In the beginning, Hill spent his time mailing out postcards to invite as many people as he could to meetings and within just a few weeks, the group grew to thirty people. Initially, the ANT held its performances in the basements of the Abyssinian Baptist Church and the 135th Street library. Soon after its founding, the ANT won attention and praise for its first major production, a staging of Hill’s On Striver’s Row. Between 1940 and 1949 the ANT produced a total of 19 plays, 12 of which were based on original scripts. Well-known actors and actresses who worked with the ANT, in some cases starting their theatrical careers there, included Ruby Dee, Sidney Poitier, Harry Belafonte, and Clarice Taylor amongst others. Learn black history, teach black history at blackfacts.com…
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BlackFacts.com presents the black fact of the day for June 4. Angela Davis was acquitted by a white jury. She is an American political activist, philosopher, academic, and author of over ten books on class, feminism, race, and the US prison system. Born to an African-American family in Birmingham, Alabama, Davis studied French at Brandeis University and philosophy at the University of Frankfurt in West Germany. After returning to the United States, she joined the Communist Party and became involved in numerous causes, including the second-wave feminist movement and the campaign against the Vietnam War. Championing the cause of black prisoners in the 1960s and ’70s, Davis grew particularly attached to a young revolutionary, George Jackson, one of the so-called Soledad Brothers (after Soledad Prison). Jackson’s brother Jonathan was among the four persons killed—including the trial judge—in an abortive escape and kidnapping attempt from the Hall of Justice in Marin County, California. Suspected of complicity, Davis was sought for arrest and became one of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s most wanted criminals. Arrested in New York City in October 1970, she was returned to California to face charges of kidnapping, murder, and conspiracy. Across the nation, thousands of people began organizing a movement to gain her release. Learn black history, teach black history at blackfacts.com…
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BlackFacts.com presents the black fact of the day for June 3. Physician Charles Drew was born. He was an African American physician and surgeon who was an authority on the preservation of human blood for transfusion. Drew was educated at Amherst College, McGill University, Montreal, and Columbia University. While earning his doctorate at Columbia in the late 1930s, he researched the properties and preservation of blood plasma. He soon developed efficient ways to process and store large quantities of blood plasma in “blood banks.” As the leading authority in the field, he organized and directed the blood-plasma programs of the United States and Great Britain in the early years of World War II, while also agitating the authorities to stop excluding the blood of African Americans from plasma-supply networks. He resigned his official posts in 1942 after the armed forces ruled that the blood of African Americans would be accepted but would have to be stored separately from that of whites. He then became a surgeon and professor of medicine at Freedmen’s Hospital, Washington, D.C., and Howard University (1942–50). Learn black history, teach black history at blackfacts.com…
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BlackFacts.com presents the black fact of the day for June 2. James Augustine Healy became the first Black Roman Catholic Bishop in USA. Healy was one of 10 children born on a Georgia cotton plantation to an Irish immigrant and his common-law wife, a mixed-race slave. Because Healy and his siblings were legally considered illegitimate and slaves, they were barred from attending school in the state, and their parents were forced to send the boys to schools in the North. After college Healy attended seminary in Montreal and in Paris and was ordained a priest in 1854. He was the first African American to be ordained a Roman Catholic priest. He did mission work in Boston, where he opposed state anti-Catholic laws. He then served as chancellor of the diocese and, during the Civil War, as secretary to the bishop. Healy was consecrated as Bishop of Portland on June 2, 1875, becoming the first African American to be consecrated a Catholic bishop. Two months before his death, Healy was called as assistant to the Papal throne by Pope Leo XIII, a position in the Catholic hierarchy just below that of cardinal. Learn black history, teach black history at blackfacts.com.…
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BlackFacts.com presents the black fact of the day for June 1st. White House Conference on Civil Rights The aim of the conference was built on the momentum of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 in addressing discrimination against African Americans. The four areas of discussion were housing, economic security, education, and the administration of justice. President Lyndon Johnson had promised this conference in his commencement address at Howard University the year before. Like that address, the conference was named "To Fulfill These Rights." The title was a play on "To Secure These Rights," a report issued by Truman's civil rights commission in 1947. There were over 2,400 participants, representing all the major civil rights groups. Out of the conference came a hundred-page report. Learn black history, teach black history at blackfacts.com.…
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BlackFacts.com presents the black fact of the day for May 31. Jesse Dwight Locker was born. He was an attorney, politician and, the second black American appointed as ambassador. Locker graduated valedictorian of his class at College Hill High School and graduated from Howard University with a law degree in 1945. He led the North Ward Progressive Republican Club and the Lincoln-Douglas Republican Club. He also endeavored with various charities. In 1941, he won the first of six terms on the city council, rising to become its president. Locker also was president of the segregated Hamilton County Bar Association for Negro Lawyers. In 1953, President Dwight Eisenhower named him ambassador to Liberia. His foremost diplomatic accomplishment was negotiating for use of the principal airport by U.S. airlines. Learn black history, teach black history at blackfacts.com…
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BlackFacts.com presents the black fact of the day for May 30. Countee Cullen was born. He was an American poet, one of the finest of the Harlem Renaissance. He won a citywide poetry contest as a schoolboy and saw his winning stanzas widely reprinted. At New York University he won the Witter Bynner Poetry Prize and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. Major American literary magazines accepted his poems regularly, and his first collection of poems, "Color" (1925), was published to critical acclaim before he had finished college. Most notable among his other works are "Copper Sun" (1927), "The Ballad of the Brown Girl" (1928), and "The Medea and Some Poems" (1935). His novel "One Way to Heaven" (1932) depicts life in Harlem. The Countee Cullen Library, a Harlem branch location of the New York Public Library, was named in his honor. In 2013, he was inducted into the New York Writers Hall of Fame. Learn black history, teach black history at blackfacts.com…
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BlackFacts.com presents the black fact of the day for May 29. Thomas Bradley was elected the first African-American mayor of Los Angeles. The son of sharecroppers and the grandson of slaves, Bradley grew up in poverty. When he was seven years old, his parents moved to Los Angeles. He was attending Southwestern University Law School while a police officer and began his practice as a lawyer when he retired from the police department. His first mayoral campaign was in 1969; the city was still recovering from the Watts riots of 1965. In 1973, he defeated Sam Yorty after establishing the support of a coalition with white voters. Bradley was re-elected four times. Bradley’s achievements included securing the 1984 Summer Olympic Games for Los Angeles and presiding over two decades of expansion and civic growth. He ran for Governor of California twice, in 1982 and 1986, but lost both times to Republican George Deukmejian. He was the first African American to head a gubernatorial ticket in California. Learn black history, teach black history at blackfacts.com…
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BlackFacts.com presents the black fact of the day for May 28. Gladys Knight was born. She is an American singer, songwriter, actress, businesswoman, and author. Knight is known for the hits she recorded during the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s with her group Gladys Knight & the Pips. Throughout the late 1940s and early 1950s, she would sing in the church choir. She first achieved minor fame by winning Ted Mack's "The Original Amateur Hour" TV show contest at the age of eight in 1952. The Pips were invented when she joined with her brother Merald and cousin William Guest to perform at a family party. Knight has acted in films, such as “Pipe Dreams” (1976), and on television, including a season as Flip Wilson’s wife on the comedy series “Charlie and Company”. She has also produced television musical specials, among them the highly acclaimed “Sisters in the Name of Love” (HBO, 1986), which featured the voices of Patti LaBelle and Dionne Warwick. With the Pips, she was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1996 and received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Rhythm & Blues Foundation in 1998. Learn black history, teach black history at blackfacts.com…
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BlackFacts.com presents the black fact of the day for May 27. Ernest Green Graduates from Little Rock. He was the first African-American to graduate from Little Rock Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas in 1958. As a child, Green participated in church activities and was a member of the Boy Scouts of America, eventually earning the rank of Eagle Scout. He attended segregated Dunbar Junior High School and graduated after ninth grade, at which time he was assigned to Horace Mann High School, a new high school for African-Americans. At the end of his junior year at Horace Mann, Green volunteered to attend the all-white Little Rock Central High School in the fall of 1957 and help desegregate one of the nation's largest schools. Green became the only senior among the nine African Americans who decided to integrate Central High that fall. In 1999, he and the other members of the Little Rock Nine were awarded the Congressional Gold Medal by President Bill Clinton. Learn black history, teach black history at blackfacts.com…
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BlackFacts.com presents the black fact of the day for May 26. Miles Davis was born. He was an American jazz musician, a trumpeter who as a bandleader and composer was one of the major influences on art from the late 1940s. Davis grew up in East St. Louis, Illinois, where his father was a prosperous dental surgeon, and began studying trumpet in his early teens. He played with jazz bands in the St. Louis area before moving to New York City in 1944 to study at the Institute of Musical Art, although he skipped many classes and instead was schooled through jam sessions with masters such as Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker. Davis's stint from 1947 to 1948 in a quintet led by bebop genius Charlie Parker brought him early fame. A fine bebop trumpeter, Davis soon felt a need to rid his music of bebop's style and to restore jazz's more melodic elements. In 1955 Davis formed his most celebrated group, a remarkably talented quintet that featured tenor saxophonist John Coltrane (1926–1967), pianist Red Garland, bassist Paul Chambers, and drummer Philly Joe Jones. In his much-praised and revealing autobiography, "Miles", he wrote frankly of his hedonistic past and of the racism he saw in the music industry. Along with Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, and Charlie Parker, Davis is regarded as one of the four most important and influential musicians in jazz history, as well as the music’s most eclectic practitioner. Learn black history, teach black history at blackfacts.com…
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BlackFacts.com presents the black fact of the day for May 25. 30 million people worldwide joined "Race against time" to raise money for starving in Africa. The event was organized by chairman and founder Chris Long, Bob Geldof (Band Aid and Live Aid) and John Anderson (Head of Global Special Events, UNICEF). A central event was the lighting of a symbolic torch at the United Nations by Omar Khalifa, a champion Sudanese 1500m runner, to signal the start of the 10K races around the world. Khalifa then ran through 12 European capitals, and was greeted by leaders such as Margaret Thatcher, Prince Charles and Princess Diana, François Mitterrand, Helmut Kohl and Pope John Paul II. 274 cities held official events, allowing over 19.8 million participants to follow designated courses, with television coverage worldwide. The New York Times reported, "With 200,000 Londoners setting the pace, more than 20 million runners in 76 countries ran today in Sport Aid, a global benefit to raise money for the starving in Africa." $100 million was raised for famine relief in Africa. $45 million was brought in from the global broadcast of a two-hour television special that reached 750 million people. Learn black history, teach black history at blackfacts.com…
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Patti LaBelle was born. She is an American singer, songwriter, actress, and businesswoman. LaBelle began her career in the early 1960s as lead singer and front woman of the vocal group, Patti LaBelle and the Bluebelles. Following the group's name change to Labelle in the 1970s, they released the iconic disco song "Lady Marmalade". The band later became the first African-American vocal group to land the cover of Rolling Stone magazine and they became the first pop group to play at the Metropolitan Opera House. LaBelle is referred to as the "Godmother of Soul". In a career that has spanned over seven different decades, she has sold more than 50 million records worldwide. LaBelle has been inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame, the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and the Apollo Theater Hall of Fame. Her success has extended as an actress with a notable role in the Oscar nominated film, A Soldier's Story, and in TV shows such as A Different World and American Horror Story: Freak Show. He sang her iconic version of "Over The Rainbow" for President Barack Obama live at the White House in March 2014. Learn black history, teach black history at blackfacts.com…
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BlackFacts.com presents the black fact of the day for May 23. Shuffle Along, the 1st black hit musical, opened at the 63rd St. Music Hall in New York City. The show was developed by black comedians Flournoy Miller and Aubrey Lyles and featured music by Eubie Blake and lyrics by Noble Sissle. Based loosely on Miller and Lyles’ vaudeville act “The Mayor of Dixie,” the show told the story of a heated mayoral election in Jimtown, Dixieland. Lively dancing and memorable songs—including “I’m Just Wild About Harry” and “Love Will Find a Way”—contributed to the musical’s great popularity with audiences. The show ran a total of 504 performances and helped widen opportunities on Broadway for black musicians and performers. During its long run, the show introduced three entertainers whose later careers would be notable: Paul Robeson, Florence Mills, and Josephine Baker. It was the first Broadway musical to feature a sophisticated African-American love story, rather than a frivolous comic one. Learn black history, teach black history at blackfacts.com…
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BlackFacts.com presents the black fact of the day for May 22. Benjamin O. Davis Jr. became the first black Brigadier general in the United States Air Force. Davis studied at the University of Chicago before entering the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York, in 1932. Upon his graduation, he was swiftly promoted to lieutenant colonel, and he organized the 99th Pursuit Squadron, the first entirely African American air unit, which flew tactical support missions in the Mediterranean theatre. In 1959 Davis became the first African American officer to reach the rank of major general in the air force and was promoted to lieutenant general in 1965. On December 9, 1998, Davis was awarded his fourth general’s star (making him a general of the highest order within the U.S. military). He was the first African American to be so honored in retirement. His 1991 autobiography, "Benjamin O. Davis, Jr., American", recounts his career. Davis followed in his father's footsteps in breaking racial barriers, as Benjamin O. Davis Sr. was the first black brigadier general in the United States Army. Learn black history, teach black history at blackfacts.com…
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BlackFacts.com presents the black fact of the day for May 21. Lowell Perry was confirmed as chairman of the Equal Opportunity Commission. He was an American football player and coach, government official, businessman, and broadcaster. Perry was the first African-American assistant coach in the National Football League (NFL), the first African American to broadcast an NFL game to a national audience, and Chrysler's first African-American plant manager. Perry attended the University of Michigan where he studied history. He played at the end position for the Michigan Wolverines football team from 1950 to 1952. In 1963, Perry began a 17-year career with Chrysler. He started as a personnel specialist. In April 1966, Perry was hired as a color analyst for CBS Television to broadcast Steelers games alongside play-by-play man Joe Tucker. He was the first African-American to broadcast an NFL game to a national audience. He returned to Chrysler where he became a personnel manager in 1970. In 1973, he was appointed the plant manager of Chrysler's Eldon Avenue Axle Plant in Detroit. He was the first African American to hold the plant manager position at a U.S. automobile company. In 1975, Perry was appointed by President Gerald Ford to be commissioner of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Learn black history, teach black history at blackfacts.com…
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BlackFacts.com presents the black fact of the day for May 20. Emancipation in the State of Florida was proclaimed. On May 20, 1865, Union Brigadier Gen. Edward McCook formally announced President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation from the steps of the Knott House in Tallahassee. President Abraham Lincoln signed this proclamation on January 1, 1863, but it was not enforced in the South. On June 19th, 1865, Major General Gordon Granger of the Union Army arrived in Galveston, Texas, and informed the slaves that the Civil War had ended and slavery had been abolished. The NAACP's Tallahassee branch has called on the Florida Legislature to officially recognize May 20 as Emancipation Day. Emancipation Day has been celebrated in Florida annually on May 20th since 1865. It is a paid holiday for Tallahassee and Leon County employees. Learn black history, teach black history at blackfacts.com…
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BlackFacts.com presents the black fact of the day for May 19. Malcolm X was born. He was an African-American Muslim minister and human rights activist who was a popular figure during the civil rights movement, and best known for his time spent as a vocal spokesman for the Nation of Islam. Malcolm's father, Earl Little, was a leader in an African-American group. This caused the family to be harassed by white supremacists. When Malcolm was six, his father was found dead on the tracks of the local streetcar. While the police said the death was an accident, many thought his dad was murdered. As a young black man in the 1940s, Malcolm felt he had no real opportunities. He worked odd jobs, but felt he would never succeed despite how hard he worked. In order to make ends meet, he eventually turned to crime. In 1945, he was caught with stolen goods and was sent to prison. After getting out of prison, he became a minister for the Nation of Islam. He worked at several temples around the country and became the leader of Temple Number 7 in Harlem. After his epiphany at Mecca, Malcolm X returned to the United States less angry and more optimistic about the prospects for a peaceful resolution to America's race problems. Just as Malcolm X appeared to be embarking on an ideological transformation with the potential to dramatically alter the course of the civil rights movement, he was assassinated. In 2021, Family members of Malcolm X have revealed a letter written by a New York police officer that they say shows the NYPD and the FBI were behind the 1965 assassination of the famed Black leader. Learn black history, teach black history at blackfacts.com…
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BlackFacts.com presents the black fact of the day for May 18. Anna Julia Cooper delivered an address at the World’s Congress of Representative Women. She was an American educator and writer whose book "A Voice From the South by a Black Woman of the South" (1892) became a classic African American feminist text. Born into slavery in 1858, Cooper went on to receive a world-class education and claim power and prestige in academic and social circles. She was also a prominent member of Washington, D.C.'s African-American community and a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority. The World's Congress of Representative Women was a week-long convention for the voicing of women's concerns. There, she was one of few African-American women to speak about the racism of which she did not hesitate to criticize. "I speak for the colored women of the South because it is there that the millions of blacks in this country have watered the soil with blood and tears, and it is there too that the colored woman of America has made her characteristic history, and there her destiny evolving" In 1925, at age 67, she received a doctorate from the Sorbonne in Paris, having written her dissertation on slavery. Pages 26 and 27 of the 2016 U. S. passport contain the following quotation: "The cause of freedom is not the cause of a race or a sect, a party or a class – it is the cause of humankind, the very birthright of humanity.", by Anna Julia Cooper. Learn black history, teach black history at blackfacts.com…
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BlackFacts.com presents the black fact of the day for May 17. Patricia Bath patented an apparatus that removes cataracts. She was an American ophthalmologist, inventor, and academic. Bath also became the first woman member of the Jules Stein Eye Institute, the first woman to lead a post-graduate training program in ophthalmology, and the first woman elected to the honorary staff of the UCLA Medical Center, amongst other achievements. Holder of five patents, she also founded the non-profit American Institute for the Prevention of Blindness in Washington, D.C. Bath was named head of the ophthalmology residency training program at Drew-UCLA in 1983. She was the first woman in the country to hold such a position. In 1988 Bath became the first Black female doctor to earn a medical patent. Her technique of using lasers to remove cataracts has improved or restored the vision of millions of patients around the world. In 1993 she was named Howard University Pioneer in Academic Medicine. That year Bath retired from the UCLA Medical Center and was the first woman elected to the center’s honorary medical staff. Learn black history, teach black history at blackfacts.com…
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BlackFacts.com presents the black fact of the day for May 16. Janet Jackson was born. She is an American singer and actress, one of the most popular recording artists of the 1980s and ’90s. The youngest of nine siblings in Motown’s famed Jackson family, Janet Jackson parlayed her family’s success into an independent career that spanned recordings, television, and film. In her early career, Jackson credited her brothers Michael and Jermaine Jackson as musical influences. She began her career with the variety television series "The Jacksons" in 1976 and went on to appear in other TV shows throughout the 1970s and early 1980s, including "Good Times", "Diff'rent Strokes", and "Fame". In 1982, she became a pop icon following the release of her third and fourth studio albums Control (1986) and Rhythm Nation 1814 (1989). Having sold over 100 million records, Jackson is one of the world's best-selling music artists of all time. Jackson has also been recognized for playing a pivotal role in crossing racial boundaries in the recording industry. She has been cited as an inspiration among numerous performers. Jackson was inducted to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2019. Learn black history, teach black history at blackfacts.com…
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BlackFacts.com presents the black fact of the day for May 15. Camilla Williams became the first black woman to act in a leading role in a major American opera company. She trained at Virginia State College, now Virginia State University, and received her bachelor's degree in music education. Beginning in 1944, Williams performed on the coast-to-coast RCA radio network. A noted concert artist, Williams toured throughout the United States, Latin America, fourteen African countries, as well as numerous countries in Asia. A lifetime member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), she performed in her hometown of Danville, Virginia in 1963, to raise funds to free jailed civil rights demonstrators. She also sang the national anthem before 200,000 people at the 1963 civil rights march on Washington, immediately before Martin Luther King gave his famous "I Have a Dream" speech. Williams retired from opera in 1970 and began teaching voice at Bronx College, Brooklyn College, and Queens College, all in New York City. Learn black history, teach black history at blackfacts.com…
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BlackFacts.com presents the black fact of the day for May 14. Clara Stanton Jones was born. She was the first African-American president of the American Library Association and the first African American and the first woman to serve as director of a major library system in America, as director of the Detroit Public Library. Jones obtained a well-rounded education even though the St. Louis public school system was completely segregated. She grew up in an entirely African-American world, with black role models and mentors. She began working in libraries the same year she completed her degree in Library Science. At the beginning of 1938, she worked in libraries at Dillard University in New Orleans and Southern University in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Jones spent the remainder of her library career at the Detroit Public Library, retiring in 1978 as the director. With a focus on community, she worked to desegregate libraries, library services, and overall library culture by encouraging the American Library Association to pass the “Resolution on Racism and Sexism Awareness.” In 1978, she was appointed by President Jimmy Carter to the National Commission on Libraries and Information Science. She was a member of the Public Library Association, American Civil Liberties Union, National Council of Negro Women, and more. Learn black history, teach black history at blackfacts.com…
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BlackFacts.com presents the black fact of the day for May 13. Stevie Wonder was born. He is an American singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist, a child prodigy who developed into one of the most creative musical figures of the late 20th century. Blind from birth and raised in inner-city Detroit, he was a skilled musician by age eight and made his recording debut at age 12. Although still only in his mid-20s, Wonder appeared to have mastered virtually every idiom of African-American popular music and to have synthesized them all into a language of his own. The best of his work formed a vital link between the classic rhythm-and-blues and soul performers of the 1950s and ’60s and their less commercially constrained successors. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1989, and in 1999 he was awarded the Polar Music Prize for lifetime achievement by the Royal Swedish Academy of Music. In 2005 he received a Grammy Award for lifetime achievement. Four years later he was awarded the Gershwin Prize for Popular Song from the Library of Congress, and he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2014. Learn black history, teach black history at blackfacts.com…
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BlackFacts.com presents the black fact of the day for May 12. Ving Rhames was born. He is an American actor, best known for his starring role as Luther Stickell in the "Mission: Impossible" film series and his supporting role as gang kingpin Marsellus Wallace in "Pulp Fiction". He was born and raised in Harlem, New York City. He was named after NBC journalist Irving R. Levine. He entered New York's High School of Performing Arts, where he developed his love of acting. After high school, he studied drama at SUNY Purchase, where fellow acting student Stanley Tucci gave him his nickname "Ving". Some of his works are "Jacob's Ladder", "Striptease", "Con Air", "Out of Sight", "Entrapment", "Bringing Out the Dead" and "Dawn of the Dead". He voiced Cobra Bubbles in the animated film "Lilo & Stitch". Rhames won a Golden Globe in 1998 for Best Actor. At the ceremony, he gave his award to fellow nominee Jack Lemmon. Lemmon was clearly touched by the gesture as was the celebrity audience who gave Lemmon a standing ovation. Lemmon, who tried unsuccessfully to give the award back to Rhames, said it was "one of the nicest, sweetest moments I've ever known in my life." Learn black history, teach black history at blackfacts.com…
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BlackFacts.com presents the black fact of the day for May 11. William Grant Still was born. He was the first African American to conduct a professional symphony orchestra in the United States. Though a prolific composer of operas, ballets, symphonies, and other works, he was best known for his Afro-American Symphony (1931). He first studied composition at Oberlin Conservatory of Music in Oberlin, Ohio, then under the conservative George Whitefield Chadwick at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston. Still’s concern with the position of African Americans in U.S. society is reflected in many of his works, notably the Afro-American Symphony; the ballets Sahdji (1930), and Lenox Avenue (1937); and the operas The Troubled Island and Highway No. 1, U.S.A. Often referred to as the "Dean of Afro-American Composers," Still was the first African-American to conduct a major American symphony orchestra, the first to have a symphony performed by a leading orchestra......the first to have an opera performed by a major opera company, and the first to have an opera performed on national television. The recipient of two Guggenheim fellowships and two Harmon Awards, he was also bestowed honorary doctorates from Wilberforce, Oberlin, the University of Arkansas, Bates College, Howard University, and the University of Southern California. Learn black history, teach black history at blackfacts.com…
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BlackFacts.com presents the black fact of the day for May 10. Nelson Mandela is sworn in as the first black president of South Africa. In 1944, he joined the African National Congress (ANC), a black political organization dedicated to winning rights for the black majority in white-ruled South Africa. In 1948, the racist National Party came to power, and apartheid–South Africa’s institutionalized system of white supremacy and racial segregation–became official government policy. Throughout his 27 years of incarceration, Mandela retained wide support among South Africa’s Black population, and his imprisonment became a cause célèbre among the international community that condemned apartheid. On February 11, 1990, the South African government under President de Klerk released Mandela from prison.Shortly after his release, Mandela was chosen deputy president of the African National Congress (ANC); he became president of the party in July 1991. Mandela and de Klerk were jointly awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1993 for their efforts. He was the first non-White head of state in South African history, as well as the first to take office following the dismantling of the apartheid system and the introduction of full, multiracial democracy. Learn black history, teach black history at blackfacts.com…
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BlackFacts.com presents the black fact of the day for May 9. Tony Gwynn was born. He was an American professional baseball right fielder, who played 20 seasons (1982–2001) in Major League Baseball (MLB) for the San Diego Padres, and considered one of the best and most consistent hitters in baseball history. Gwynn attended San Diego State University (California) on a basketball scholarship, where he set a school record for assists as the team’s point guard. He also excelled at baseball and was drafted in 1981 by both the San Diego Clippers, of the NBA, and by the San Diego Padres, of Major League Baseball. He chose the Padres, and during the 1982 season, he was called up from their minor league team to play. He played his entire career as an outfielder with the Padres. Gwynn’s career highlights include setting the National League record for most consecutive seasons hitting .300 or better, tying the NL record for most batting titles, and being the 22nd player to reach 3,000 hits. He retired from professional baseball at the end of the 2001 season, and in 2002 he became the head baseball coach at San Diego State University. Learn black history, teach black history at blackfacts.com…
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BlackFacts.com presents the black fact of the day for May 8. Carole Gist was born. She is an American TV host, model and first African American woman to win the Miss USA title. Throughout her reign as Miss USA, Gist captivated audiences with her stories of being from a single-parent home where she had a number of siblings and having to overcome numerous financial and social obstacles. Despite the financial obstacles she faced growing up, the intelligent young woman still graduated, with honors, from The Cass Technical High School in 1987. She went on to earn a bachelor's degree in Marketing Management from Northwood University in Midland, Michigan. She has spoken of not grasping the enormity of her status of being the first black woman to win the title of Miss USA during the time of her reign. However, she recognizes the importance of her status and she is humbled by the achievement. After working in hotel management, she married Doreonne Stramler and she became the mother of 2 children. Learn black history, teach black history at blackfacts.com…
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BlackFacts.com presents the black fact of the day for May 7. J. R. Winters received a patent for the fire escape ladder. He was born in Leesburg, Virginia to an African-American brickmaker and a Shawnee Indian mother, who was the daughter of a noted herbalist and medical practitioner. In 1830, at the age of 14, he relocated to Chambersburg, Pennsylvania. During this time that Winters lived in Chambersburg, a city known for Quaker abolitionist activity, he was active in the Underground Railroad. In the 1870s as buildings became taller, Winters noticed that firemen had to take ladders off of their horse-drawn wagons to climb to windows, rescue people, and spray water on fires. The ladders had to be foldable or collapsible so that fire wagons could turn corners in narrow streets and alleys. He built a fire wagon made with a mounted ladder that could be folded and received a patent for it on May 7, 1878. Three years later in 1882 Winters received a patent for a fire escape ladder that could be attached to buildings. While all of his inventions saved lives and made firefighting and building escape easier, Winters reportedly received much praise but little money for his inventions. In 2005, the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission erected a historical marker honoring Winters at 130 North Second Street. Learn black history, teach black history at blackfacts.com…
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BlackFacts.com presents the black fact of the day for May 6. President Eisenhower signed civil rights act. (On September 4, 1957, nine African American students were due to enter the school, a previously all-white institution. These students were blocked by 270 National Guard troops who had been ordered there by State Governor, Orval Faubus. ) (Media filmed the students being turned away and being verbally abused by students and adults of Little Rock. Shocked by these images which had been aired across the nation, President Eisenhower issued 10,000 paratroopers to escort the black students into their new school.) The significance of the Civil Rights Act of 1960 was that it acknowledged there was an issue with racial discrimination within the United States. It established Federal inspection of local voter registration polls by appointed referees to oversee southern elections and ensure that African Americans were permitted to vote. Penalties for anyone who obstructed someone’s attempt to register to vote or vote. It extended the life of the Civil Rights Commission which was previously limited to two years. The Commission would oversee voter registration and practices. Prosecution for interfering with court orders regarding school desegregation. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 addressed desegregation in schools, discrimination in the workplace and public facilities. (Although this Act failed to enforce the law it showed the federal government’s commitment to work with civil rights organizations to end discrimination and segregation.) Learn black history, teach black history at blackfacts.com…
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BlackFacts.com presents the black fact of the day for May 5. Adam Clayton Powell Sr. was born. He was an American pastor who developed the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem, New York as the largest Protestant congregation in the country, with 10,000 members. He was a founder of the National Urban League, active in the NAACP and several fraternal organizations, and served as trustee of several historically black colleges and schools. Powell was ordained a Baptist minister in 1892; he served at churches in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and New Haven, Connecticut between 1892 and 1908. From 1908 until 1936, he served as pastor of the century-old Abyssinian Baptist Church. During the Great Depression, Powell waged successful campaigns to feed the poor and to create better employment opportunities and city services for African Americans. Powell's son, Adam Clayton Powell Jr., succeeded his father as pastor at the church in 1937 after working with him for several years as an assistant. Learn black history, teach black history at blackfacts.com…
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BlackFacts.com presents the black fact of the day for May 4. Kimora Lee Simmons was born. She is an American entrepreneur, fashion designer, TV personality, author, philanthropist and model. Kimora was born of African American and Japanese heritage. She attended public school, but when she grew to 5-foot, 8-inches by the time she was ten years old, she became the easy target of schoolyard taunts and teasing. Hoping to boost her confidence, Simmons's mother enrolled her daughter in a modeling class when she was eleven years old. Two years later, at the age of thirteen, Simmons was awarded an exclusive modeling contract with Chanel. In 1998, Simmons' then husband, music mogul and entrepreneur, Russell Simmons, was at the helm of "Phat Farm", an urban menswear brand. Simmons created a parallel women’s brand, "Baby Phat by Kimora Lee Simmons", under the umbrella of "Phat Fashions". She has also been featured in rap music videos and had her own reality show called “Kimora: Life in the Fab Lane”. She established the Kimora Lee Simmons Scholarship Fund at her high school alma mater in St. Louis to provide college tuition support for academically successful girls with financial needs. Learn black history, teach black history at blackfacts.com…
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BlackFacts.com presents the black fact of the day for May 3. Sugar Ray Robinson was born. He was an American professional boxer, considered by many authorities to have been the best fighter in history. Robinson originally aspired to be a doctor, but after dropping out of High School he switched his goal to boxing. He made his professional debut on October 4, 1940, winning by a second-round stoppage over Joe Echevarria and fought five more times in the same year, winning each time, with four wins coming by way of knockout. Robinson won 40 consecutive professional fights before losing to Jake LaMotta in one of their six battles. On December 20, 1946, he won the welterweight championship by defeating Tommy Bell on a 15-round decision. He was six times a world champion: once as a welterweight (147 pounds), from 1946 to 1951, and five times as a middleweight (160 pounds), between 1951 and 1960. In his later years, Robinson worked in show business, even doing some television acting. The work greatly helped salvage his finances and was the reason he eventually settled in Southern California with his second wife, Millie. Learn black history, teach black history at blackfacts.com…
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BlackFacts.com presents the black fact of the day for May 2. First game of the Negro National Baseball League. The first viable Black league was formed in 1920 under the leadership of Rube Foster, manager of the Chicago American Giants. He had been Negro baseball’s best pitcher in the early years of the 20th century and then its best-known manager and promoter. Foster wanted black players to be ready when integration finally came. He routinely spoke to players, telling them to always play at the highest level of excellence. The first game of this new league was held on May 2, 1920, in Indiana. It was between Foster’s team, the American Giants, and the Indianapolis ABCs. Negro Leagues baseball became the largest black-owned organization in America, and the league did its part to aid a community living with segregation. Owners raised money to support anti-lynching campaigns, the United Negro College Fund, and the NAACP. In 1947, the color barrier was broken when Jackie Robinson joined the Brooklyn Dodgers.Within five years, more than 150 Negro Leagues players joined Major League teams. Without its greatest stars, and struggling with low attendance, the era of Negro Leagues baseball came to a close. Most importantly, the creation of the Negro Leagues proved that Black players could play on even terms with their white counterparts – and draw just as much interest from baseball fans. Learn black history, teach black history at blackfacts.com…
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BlackFacts.com presents the black fact of the day for May 1st. Gwendolyn Brooks became the first African American to receive a Pulitzer Prize. She graduated from Wilson Junior College in Chicago in 1936. Her early verses appeared in the Chicago Defender, a newspaper written primarily for that city’s African American community. Brooks published her first poem, "Eventide", in a children's magazine, American Childhood, when she was 13 years old. By the age of 16, she had already written and published approximately 75 poems. Her characters were often drawn from the inner city life that Brooks knew well. She said, "I lived in a small second-floor apartment at the corner, and I could look first on one side and then the other. There was my material." Annie Allen (1949), for which she won the Pulitzer Prize, is a loosely connected series of poems related to an African American girl’s growing up in Chicago. Her autobiographical "Report From Part One", including reminiscences, interviews, photographs and vignettes, came out in 1972, and "Report From Part Two" was published in 1995, when she was almost 80. She was considered one of America’s leading black writers. She was praised for her use of language and the way people identified with her writing. Learn black history, teach black history at blackfacts.com…
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1 April 30 - BlackFacts.com Black History Minute 1:40
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Play Later Play Later Lists Like LikedBlackFacts.com presents the black fact of the day for April 30. Michelle Howard was born. She was the first African American woman to command a United States Navy ship. She also became the highest-ranking woman in the United States Armed Forces history. During high school Howard applied to the U.S. Naval Academy, Annapolis, Maryland, and upon entering the academy in 1978, she became one of only seven black women in the school’s class of 1,363 students. She became the first African American woman to lead a U.S. Navy battle group when in 2009 she took command of Expeditionary Strike Group Two. On July 1, 2014, Howard became the first woman promoted to the rank of four-star admiral in the U.S. Navy. That day she was also appointed the 38th vice-chief of naval operations. Among Howard’s recognitions are the NAACP Image Award (2013), Women of Color STEM Career Achievement Award (2008), and the USO Military Woman of the Year (2011). Learn black history, teach black history at blackfacts.com…
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1 April 29 - BlackFacts.com Black History Minute 1:47
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Play Later Play Later Lists Like LikedBlackFacts.com presents the black fact of the day for April 29. Duke Ellington was born. One of the originators of big-band jazz, Ellington led his band for more than half a century, composed thousands of scores, and created one of the most distinctive ensemble sounds in all of Western music. Born in Washington, D.C., Ellington was based in New York City from the mid-1920s onward and gained a national profile through his orchestra's appearances at the Cotton Club in Harlem. He selected his musicians for their expressive individuality and several members of his ensemble including trumpeter Cootie Williams and clarinetist Barney Bigard, amongst others, were themselves, important jazz artists. Scores of his originals became jazz standards, and he ranked with the other masters of the Great American Songbook such as George Gershwin, Cole Porter, and Irving Berlin. His gift of melody and his mastery of sonic textures, rhythms, and compositional forms translated his often subtle, sometimes complex perceptions into a body of music unequaled in jazz history. Learn black history, teach black history at blackfacts.com…
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1 April 28 - BlackFacts.com Black History Minute 2:01
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Play Later Play Later Lists Like LikedBlackFacts.com presents the black fact of the day for April 28. Samuel Lee Gravely Jr. became the first Black Admiral in the U.S. Navy. He attended Virginia Union University but left before graduating to join the Naval Reserve in 1942. He was commissioned in 1944 and served during World War II onboard USS PC-1264. After the war, Gravely had a brief stint in the civilian world before he was recalled to active duty in 1949. Gravely was recalled to active duty in 1949 and worked as a recruiter in Washington, D.C. before holding both shore and sea assignments during the Korean War. In 1962 he became the first black officer to command a United States warship when he was named skipper of the destroyer Falgout, which patrolled the so-called Pacific Barrier between the Aleutian and Midway Islands. For his final tour of duty, beginning in 1978, up until his retirement in 1980, Vice Admiral Gravely served as Director of the Defense Communications Agency. Gravely's military decorations include the Legion of Merit, Bronze Star Medal, Meritorious Service Medal and Navy Commendation Medal. Learn black history, teach black history at blackfacts.com…
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1 April 27 - BlackFacts.com Black History Minute 1:54
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Play Later Play Later Lists Like LikedBlackFacts.com presents the black fact of the day for April 27. Coretta Scott King was born. She was an American civil rights activist who was the wife of Martin Luther King, Jr. She graduated from Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio, and in 1951 enrolled at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston. While working toward a degree in voice, she met Martin Luther King, Jr., then a graduate theology student at Boston University. Coretta Scott King joined her husband in civil rights activism in the 1950s and ’60s, taking part in the Montgomery bus boycott (1955) and efforts to pass the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Following the assassination of her husband in 1968 and the conviction of James Earl Ray for the murder, she continued to be active in the civil rights movement. She founded in Atlanta the Martin Luther King, Jr., Center for Nonviolent Social Change, which was led at the turn of the 21st century by her son Dexter. She was the recipient of various honors and tributes both before and after her death. She was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame in 2011. Learn black history, teach black history at blackfacts.com…
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1 April 26 - BlackFacts.com Black History Minute 1:40
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Play Later Play Later Lists Like LikedBlackFacts.com presents the black fact of the day for April 26. Gertrude Ma Rainey was born. She was a singer who was known as the “mother of the blues” and who was recognized as the first great professional blues vocalist. She began her career as a performer at a talent show in Columbus, Georgia, when she was approximately 12 years old. As a member of the First African Baptist Church, she began performing in black minstrel shows. In 1923, Rainey was discovered by Paramount Records producer J. Mayo Williams. She signed a recording contract with that company, and in December she made her first eight recordings in Chicago. Rainey recorded with Thomas Dorsey and Louis Armstrong, and with the Georgia Jazz Band. She toured until 1935 when she largely retired from performing. After her mother and sister died, Rainey retired completely from the music business in 1935, returning to her hometown of Columbus, Georgia. There, she reportedly owned two theaters, the Lyric and the Airdome. Learn black history, teach black history at blackfacts.com…
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1 April 25 - BlackFacts.com Black History Minute 2:00
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Play Later Play Later Lists Like LikedBlackFacts.com presents the black fact of the day for April 25. United Negro College Fund was founded. It is is a philanthropic organization that funds scholarships for Black students and general scholarship funds for 37 private historically Black colleges and universities. The organization awards 10,000 students annually through 400 scholarship and internship programs, so that students from low-and moderate-income families can afford college tuition, books and room and board. In 1943, Frederick D. Patterson wrote a letter to The Pittsburgh Courier proposing the creation of an alliance of black colleges that would raise money for their mutual benefit. Its first campaign received the support of many prominent Americans, including President Franklin D. Roosevelt and John D. Rockefeller, II. The collective effort raised $765,000, equivalent to $10 million today, which is three times what its member institutions had raised separately the previous year. In June 2020, philanthropists Reed Hastings and his wife Patty Quillin donated $120 million to the UNCF to be used as scholarship funds for students enrolled at UNCF institutions. Their single donation is the largest in UNCF history. Learn black history, teach black history at blackfacts.com…
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BlackFacts.com presents the black fact of the day for April 24. Mathematician David Blackwell was born. He made significant contributions to game theory, probability theory, information theory, and Bayesian statistics. He also broke racial barriers when he was named the first African American member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences. At age 16 he entered the University of Illinois, where his early aptitude for mathematics blossomed. He earned bachelor’s (1938), master’s (1939), and doctorate (1941) degrees, and a postdoctoral fellowship at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, New Jersey. In 1954 Blackwell was invited to join the faculty at the University of California, Berkeley, where he became that institution’s first African American tenured professor. He was known for his independent invention of dynamic programming, which is used today in finance and in various areas of science, including genome analysis. He wrote two books, published more than 80 papers and held 12 honorary degrees from Harvard, Yale, Carnegie Mellon, Howard and other universities. In 2018, UC Berkeley named an undergraduate residence hall in his honor. Learn black history, teach black history at blackfacts.com…
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BlackFacts.com presents the black fact of the day for April 23. Inventor Granville T. Woods was born. He was known for devising a number of new electrical devices for the railroads. His inventions helped make rail travel safer and faster. Woods studied engineering at night school and became a steam locomotive engineer. He earned his first patent in 1884 for an improved steam boiler furnace. By 1878, he had become an engineer on the Ironsides, a British steamship. Within two years, he had become the ship's chief engineer. In all of the positions that he held, Woods experienced discrimination. Unhappy with his inability to obtain higher positions, Woods moved to Cincinnati, Ohio, where he established his own machine shop in 1880. He invented and patented Tunnel Construction for the electric railroad system, and was referred to by some as the "Black Edison". In 2004, the New York City Transit Authority organized an exhibition on Woods which utilized bus and train depots, and an issue of four million MetroCards commemorating the inventor's achievements in pioneering the third rail. Learn black history, teach black history at blackfacts.com…
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BlackFacts.com presents the black fact of the day for April 22. Bob Marley One Love Concert. It was a large concert held at The National Stadium in Kingston, Jamaica, and was held during a political civil war between opposing parties Jamaican Labour Party and the People's National Party. With tensions rising, both parties hired local gang members for protection. Ironically, it was the gang members who came up with idea of the One Love Concert. They wanted the fighting to stop. It brought together 16 of Reggae's biggest acts, and was dubbed by the media as the "Third World Woodstock", "Bob Marley plays for Peace" and simply, "Bob Marley Is Back." Peter Tosh took the opportunity during his performance to berate the two political leaders sitting directly in front of him for their positions against legalizing marijuana. The concert came to its peak during Bob Marley & The Wailers' performance of "Jammin'", when Marley joined the hands of political rivals Michael Manley and Edward Seaga. It was not until May 1981 that Prime Minister Edward Seaga and Michael Manley met again in public and shook hands. It was at the Jamaican State Funeral for Bob Marley. Learn black history, teach black history at blackfacts.com…
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BlackFacts.com presents the black fact of the day for April 21. Prince passed away. He was a singer, guitarist, songwriter, and producer among the most talented American musicians of his generation. Prince’s recording career began with funk and soul marketed to a Black audience; his early music also reflected the contemporary musical impact of disco. With very few African American residents, his hometown, Minneapolis, Minnesota, was an unlikely site for the development of a major Black star, but Prince even managed to lead other local musicians, to major success. Purple Rain (1984) made him one of the major stars of the 1980s and remains his biggest-selling album. In 1994, Prince began to release albums in quick succession as a means of releasing himself from his contractual obligations to Warner Bros. He also began appearing with the word "slave" written on his face. Prince formally adopted the "Love Symbol" as his stage name. At this time, Prince was referred to as "The Artist Formerly Known as Prince" or "The Artist". He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2004. Learn black history, teach black history at blackfacts.com…
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BlackFacts.com: Learn/Teach/Create Black History
BlackFacts.com presents the black fact of the day for April 21. Prince passed away. He was a singer, guitarist, songwriter, and producer among the most talented American musicians of his generation. Prince’s recording career began with funk and soul marketed to a Black audience; his early music also reflected the contemporary musical impact of disco. With very few African American residents, his hometown, Minneapolis, Minnesota, was an unlikely site for the development of a major Black star, but Prince even managed to lead other local musicians, to major success. Purple Rain (1984) made him one of the major stars of the 1980s and remains his biggest-selling album. In 1994, Prince began to release albums in quick succession as a means of releasing himself from his contractual obligations to Warner Bros. He also began appearing with the word "slave" written on his face. Prince formally adopted the "Love Symbol" as his stage name. At this time, Prince was referred to as "The Artist Formerly Known as Prince" or "The Artist". He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2004. Learn black history, teach black history at blackfacts.com…
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BlackFacts.com presents the black fact of the day for April 20. The United States Supreme Court upheld the use of busing to achieve racial desegregation in schools. The Burger Court in Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education ruled that the school district must achieve racial balance even if it meant redrawing school boundaries and the use of busing as a legal tool. In 1954, in the case of Brown v. Board of Education, the Supreme Court ruled that racial segregation of schools was unconstitutional. However, many neighborhood schools remained segregated due to the demographics of a city or town. In Charlotte, North Carolina, for example, in the mid-1960s less than 5 percent of African American children attended integrated schools. Indeed, busing was used by white officials to maintain segregation. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), on behalf of the parents of a six-year-old child, sued the Charlotte-Mecklenburg school district to allow their son to attend Seversville Elementary School. James McMillan, the federal district judge in the case, ruled in favor of the family and oversaw the implementation of a busing strategy that integrated the district’s schools. McMillan’s decision was appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which upheld it. The busing strategy was adopted elsewhere in the United States and played an instrumental role in integrating U.S. public schools. Learn black history, teach black history at blackfacts.com…
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BlackFacts.com presents the black fact of the day for April 19. Max Robinson became the 1st African-American journalist to anchor a nightly network newscast. Robinson’s first journalism job began and ended in 1959, when he was hired to read news at a Portsmouth, Va., television station. In 1978, when Roone Arledge was looking to revamp ABC News' nightly news broadcast into World News Tonight, he remembered Robinson from a 60 Minutes interview and hired him to be a part of his new three-anchor format. Robinson's ABC tenure was marked by conflicts between himself and the management of ABC News over viewpoints and the portrayal of Black America in the news. In addition, Robinson was known to fight racism at any turn and often felt unworthy of the admiration he received and was not pleased with what he had accomplished. Together with Bob Strickland, Robinson established a program for mentoring young black broadcast journalists. During his career, he received many awards, including the Capital Press Club Journalist of the year award, and the Ohio State Award, as well as an award from the National Education Association (NEA). Learn black history, teach black history at blackfacts.com…
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BlackFacts.com presents the black fact of the day for April 18. The American Nicodemus Town Company is founded. It is the only remaining western community established by African Americans after the Civil War. Having an important role in American History, the town symbolizes the pioneering spirit of these ex-slaves who fled the war-torn South in search of real freedom and a chance to restart their lives. The townsite of Nicodemus was planned in 1877 by W.R. Hill, a land developer from Indiana, and Reverend W.H. Smith, a black man, forming the Nicodemus Town Company. The Nicodemus Town Company produced numerous circulars to promote the town, inviting “Colored People of the United States” to come and settle in the “Great Solomon Valley.” By 1880, Nicodemus had a population of almost 500, boasting a bank, two hotels, three churches, a newspaper, a drug store, and three general stores – surrounded by twelve square miles of cultivated land. In 1976, Nicodemus was named a National Historic Landmark. Learn black history, teach black history at blackfacts.com…
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BlackFacts.com presents the black fact of the day for April 17. Ralph Abernathy passed away. He was a pastor and civil rights leader who was Martin Luther King’s chief aide and closest associate during the civil rights movement of the 1950s and ’60s. He was ordained a Baptist minister in 1948 and preached his first sermon on Mother's Day. In 1950 he graduated with a bachelor's degree in mathematics. After the arrest of Rosa Parks on December 1, 1955, Abernathy collaborated with King to create the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA),which organized the Montgomery bus boycott. The King/Abernathy partnership spearheaded successful nonviolent movements in many cities. They journeyed together, often sharing the same hotel rooms, and leisure times with their wives, children, family, and friends. They were both jailed 17 times together, for their involvement in the movement. After the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968, the leadership of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) was transferred to Ralph Abernathy, who presided until 1977. Learn black history, teach black history at blackfacts.com…
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BlackFacts.com presents the black fact of the day for April 16. Birthday of Essex Hemphill. He was an influential poet, award-winning editor, memorable performance artist, and fearless activist. Hemphill's first books were the self-published chapbooks "Earth Life" (1985) and "Conditions" (1986). His poetry evoked the challenges of being black, gay and young in the midst of the AIDS epidemic. Despite a relatively short literary career, Hemphill became arguably the most critically acclaimed and best known openly gay contemporary African American poet. He received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and grants from the Pew Charitable Trust Fellowship in the Arts and the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities. Through his writing and editing, Hemphill helped break the silence surrounding Black gay experiences and enabled other African American gay men to find their voices. Learn black history, teach black history at blackfacts.com…
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BlackFacts.com presents the black fact of the day for April 15. Birthday of Norma Merrick Sklarek. She was the first African American woman to pass her license exam to officially become an architect in both New York and California. Sklarek graduated from Columbia in 1950 with a B.Arch., one of two women and the only African American in her class. After this, she faced discrimination in her search for work as an architect, applying to and being rejected by nineteen firms. In 1959, she became the first African American woman member of the American Institute of Architects. In 1960, she took a job at Gruen Associates and became responsible for hiring and overseeing staff architects and coordinating technical aspects of major projects, including the California Mart, Fox Plaza, and the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo. In 1980, Sklarek was the first African American woman elected to the College of Fellows of the American Institute of Architects for her outstanding contributions to the profession, the first woman in the Los Angeles AIA chapter to be awarded this honor. She has been called the “Rosa Parks of architecture.” Learn black history, teach black history at blackfacts.com…
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BlackFacts.com presents the black fact of the day for April 14. Tiger Woods wins Third Masters Golf Tournament. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest golfers of all time and one of the most famous athletes of all time. He has been elected to the World Golf Hall of Fame. Following an outstanding junior, college, and amateur golf career, Woods turned professional in 1996 at the age of 20. He reached number one in the world rankings for the first time in June 1997, less than a year after turning pro. When Woods won the 2001 Masters, he became the only player to win four consecutive major professional golf titles. This achievement came to be known as the "Tiger Slam." Many courses in the PGA Tour rotation have added yardage to their tees in an effort to reduce the advantage of long hitters like Woods, in a strategy that became known as "Tiger-proofing". He received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Donald Trump, who noted the golfer's ability to battle back from adversity and his "relentless will to win, win, win." Learn black history, teach black history at blackfacts.com…
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BlackFacts.com presents the black fact of the day for April 13. The Colfax Massacre. During the Reconstruction era following the American Civil War, the South was in turmoil. Many Republican politicians, who controlled the federal government, wanted equality for African Americans. In 1872 a bitterly contested election for Louisiana governor left both Republicans and Democrats declaring their candidate the winner. Federal troops and a Black militia supported the Republicans, while the Democrats formed a militia made up of local white residents including members of the Ku Klux Klan and other white supremacist organizations. A Black armed militia unit occupied the Grant Parish courthouse to prevent the Democrats from overthrowing the local Republican government. The white militia surrounded the courthouse, fired a cannon, and forced a Black man to set the courthouse on fire. As many as 150 African Americans and three white people died during and immediately after the incident. The Colfax Massacre was more or less ignored until the 1920s, when local officials raised a monument honoring the three white men who died in the attack on the courthouse, which called the massacre a “riot.” The marker was removed on May 15, 2021, for eventual placement in a museum. Learn black history, teach black history at blackfacts.com…
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BlackFacts.com presents the black fact of the day for April 9. Juanita Hall became the first African American to win a Tony Award for Best Supporting Actress. She was an American musical theatre and film actress, remembered for her roles in the original stage and screen versions of the Rodgers and Hammerstein musicals "South Pacific" as Bloody Mary and "Flower Drum Song" as Madame Liang. Prior to her acting roles, she assembled her own chorus group and kept busy with performances in concert, on records, in films, and on the air. Hall’s television appearances in the 1950s and early 1960s included The Ed Sullivan Show, The Coca-Cola Hour, The Perry Como Show. She also performed on radio in the soap opera The Story of Ruby Valentine on the National Negro Network. The serial was broadcast on 35 stations. Hall is remembered as a consummate professional and a thoughtful colleague. "I think everyone who had anything to do with her loved her," wrote Richard Rodgers. Learn black history, teach black history at BlackFacts.com…
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BlackFacts.com presents the black fact of the day for April 12. Josephine Baker passed away. She was an American-born French entertainer, French Resistance agent, and civil rights activist. Her career was centered primarily in Europe, mostly in her adopted France. She was the first Black woman to star in a major motion picture, the 1927 silent film "Siren of the Tropics". Although based in France, Baker supported the Civil Rights Movement during the 1950s. She refused to perform for segregated audiences in the United States, although she was offered $10,000 by a Miami club. In 1951, she made charges of racism against a club in Manhattan, where she had been refused service. Actress Grace Kelly, who was there at the time, rushed over to Baker, took her by the arm, and stormed out, vowing never to return. They became close friends after the incident. After decades of rejection by her countrymen and a lifetime spent dealing with racism, in 1973, Baker performed at Carnegie Hall in New York and was greeted with a standing ovation. Place Joséphine Baker in the Montparnasse Quarter of Paris was named in her honor. Learn black history, teach black history at blackfacts.com…
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BlackFacts.com presents the black fact of the day for April 11. Birthday of chemist Percy Julian. He was the first to synthesize the natural product physostigmine and was a pioneer in the industrial large-scale chemical synthesis of the human hormones progesterone and testosterone from plant sterols. He was born in Montgomery, Alabama, the son of a railway mail clerk and the grandson of enslaved people. Julian attended DePauw University in Greencastle, Indiana. The college accepted few African-American students. He graduated in 1920 as a Phi Beta Kappa and valedictorian. He was the first African-American chemist inducted into the National Academy of Sciences, and the second African-American scientist inducted from any field. In 1953, he established Julian Laboratories, a successful enterprise that he sold for more than $2 million in 1961. He later formed Julian Research Institute, a nonprofit research organization. He was active as a fund-raiser for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) for their project to sue to enforce civil rights legislation. Learn black history, teach black history at blackfacts.com…
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BlackFacts.com presents the black fact of the day for April 10. Howard Thurman passed away. He was an American Baptist preacher and theologian, the first African American dean of chapel at a traditionally white American university, and a founder of the first interracial interfaith congregation in the United States. Thurman's theology of radical nonviolence influenced and shaped a generation of civil rights activists, and he was a key mentor to leaders within the civil rights movement, including Martin Luther King Jr. Thurman traveled broadly, heading Christian missions and meeting with world figures such as Mahatma Gandhi. He was a prolific author, writing twenty books on theology, religion, and philosophy. The most famous of his works, Jesus and the Disinherited (1949), deeply influenced Martin Luther King Jr. and other leaders, both black and white, of the modern Civil Rights Movement. Howard University School of Divinity named their chapel the Thurman Chapel in memory of Howard Thurman. Learn black history, teach black history at BlackFacts.com…
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MANSA MUSA, THE TENTH MANSA OF THE MALI EMPIRE Musa I (circa 1280 – 1337), or Mansa Musa, was the tenth Mansa (a military title meaning "conqueror" or "emperor “) of the Mali Empire, an Islamic West African state. At the time of Musa's ascension to the throne, Mali in large part consisted of the territory of the former Ghana Empire, which Mali had conquered. During his reign, Musa held many titles, such as "Emir of Melle", "Lord of the Mines of Wangara", and "Conqueror of Ghanata". Musa conquered 24 cities. During Musa's reign, Mali may have been the largest producer of gold in the world, and Musa has been considered one of the wealthiest historical figures. Musa is generally referred to as "Mansa Musa" in Western manuscripts and literature. Other names used for Musa include "Mali-Koy Kankan Musa", "Gonga Musa", and "the Lion of Mali". LINEAGE AND ACCESSION TO THE THRONE Mansa Musa's grandfather was Abu-Bakr Keita, a nephew of Sundiata Keita, the founder of the Malian Empire as recorded through oral histories. Abu-Bakr did not ascend the throne, and his son, Musa's father, Faga Laye, has no significance in the History of Mali. Mansa Musa came to the throne through a practice of appointing a deputy when a king goes on his pilgrimage to Mecca or some other endeavour, and later naming the deputy as heir. Musa was appointed deputy of Abubakari Keita II, the king before him, who had reportedly embarked on an expedition to explore the limits of the Atlantic Ocean, and never returned. ISLAM AND PILGRIMAGE TO MECCA Musa was a devout Muslim, and his pilgrimage to Mecca, also known as Makkah, made him well known across Northern Africa and the Middle East. To Musa, Islam was "an entry into the cultured world of the Eastern Mediterranean". He would have spent much time fostering the growth of the religion within his empire. Musa made his pilgrimage between 1324 and 1325 spanning 2,700 miles. His procession reportedly included 60,000 men. Musa feed the entire company of men and animals. Those animals included 80 camels which each carried 23–136 kg (50–300 pounds) of gold dust. Musa gave the gold to the poor he met along his route. Musa not only gave to the cities he passed on the way to Mecca, including Cairo and Medina, but also traded gold for souvenirs. It was reported that he built a mosque every Friday. Because of his nature of giving, Musa's massive spending and generous donations created a massive ten year gold recession. LATER REIGN During his long return journey from Mecca in 1325, Musa heard news that his army had recaptured Gao. The city was at the time an important trading center. Musa made a detour and visited the city. When he returned to Niani, where he used to live, brought back many Arabian scholars and architects. Musa embarked on a large building program, raising mosques and madrasas in Timbuktu and Gao. Most notably, the ancient center of learning Sankore Madrasah was constructed during his reign. In Niani, Musa built the Hall of Audience, a building communicating by an interior door to the royal palace. During this period, there was an advanced level of urban living in the major centres of Mali. The University of Sankore in Timbuktu was staffed under Musa's reign with jurists, astronomers, and mathematicians. The university became a center of learning and culture. By the end of Mansa Musa's reign, the Sankoré University had been converted into a fully staffed University with the largest collections of books in Africa since the Library of Alexandria. The death date of Mansa Musa is highly debated among modern historians and the Arab scholars who recorded the history of Mali. When compared to the reigns of his successors, son Mansa Maghan and older brother Mansa Suleyman, and Musa's recorded 25 years of rule, the calculated date of death is 1337. Narrated by Timbuktu. To learn more about black history visit www.blackfacts.com.…
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BlackFacts.com presents the black fact of the day for April 9. Juanita Hall became the first African American to win a Tony Award for Best Supporting Actress. She was an American musical theatre and film actress, remembered for her roles in the original stage and screen versions of the Rodgers and Hammerstein musicals "South Pacific" as Bloody Mary and "Flower Drum Song" as Madame Liang. Prior to her acting roles, she assembled her own chorus group and kept busy with performances in concert, on records, in films, and on the air. Hall’s television appearances in the 1950s and early 1960s included The Ed Sullivan Show, The Coca-Cola Hour, The Perry Como Show. She also performed on radio in the soap opera The Story of Ruby Valentine on the National Negro Network. The serial was broadcast on 35 stations. Hall is remembered as a consummate professional and a thoughtful colleague. "I think everyone who had anything to do with her loved her," wrote Richard Rodgers. Learn black history, teach black history at BlackFacts.com…
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1 March 31 - BlackFacts.com Black History Fact of the Day 1:26
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Play Later Play Later Lists Like LikedOn March 31, Toni Morrison wins the Pulitzer. She was an American novelist, essayist, book editor, and college professor. In the late 1960s, Morrison became the first Black female editor in fiction at Random House in New York City. She became noted for her examination of the Black experience within the Black community. In 1988, Morrison won the Pulitzer Prize for "Beloved"; she gained worldwide recognition when she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1993, becoming the first African American woman to win this award. BlackFacts.com is the Internet's longest running Black History Encyclopedia. Our podcast summarizes the vast stories of Black history in daily episodes known as Black Facts Of The Day™. Since 1997, BlackFacts.com has been serving up Black History Facts on a daily basis to millions of users and followers on the web and via social media. Learn Black History. Teach Black History. For more Black Facts, join Black Facts Nation at BlackFacts.com/join. Because Black History is 365 Days a Year, and Black Facts Matter!…
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1 March 30 - BlackFacts.com Black History Fact of the Day 1:05
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Play Later Play Later Lists Like LikedOn March 30, The 15th Amendment was ratified and gave blacks the right to vote. In the final years of the American Civil War and the Reconstruction Era that followed, Congress repeatedly debated the rights of the millions who had been enslaved. After surviving a difficult ratification fight, the amendment was certified as duly ratified and part of the Constitution. Women would not receive that right until the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920. BlackFacts.com is the Internet's longest running Black History Encyclopedia. Our podcast summarizes the vast stories of Black history in daily episodes known as Black Facts Of The Day™. Since 1997, BlackFacts.com has been serving up Black History Facts on a daily basis to millions of users and followers on the web and via social media. Learn Black History. Teach Black History. For more Black Facts, join Black Facts Nation at BlackFacts.com/join. Because Black History is 365 Days a Year, and Black Facts Matter!…
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1 Wilma Rudolph - BlackFacts.com Showcase of Inspiring Black Women 1:35
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Play Later Play Later Lists Like LikedWilma Rudolph was an American sprinter, who became a world-record-holding Olympic champion and international icon in track and field. Rudolph was born prematurely at 4.5 pounds (2.0 kg) on June 23, 1940, in Saint Bethlehem, Tennessee. She was able to overcome several early childhood illnesses, including pneumonia, scarlet fever and polio. She enrolled at Tennessee State University in Nashville in 1958. She won a bronze medal at the 1956 Summer Olympics in Melbourne, Australia. She also won three gold medals, at the 1960 Summer Olympics in Rome, Italy. Rudolph was known as the fastest woman in the world in the 1960s and became the first American woman to win three gold medals in a single Olympic Games. BlackFacts.com is the Internet's longest running Black History Encyclopedia. Our podcast summarizes the vast stories of Black history in daily episodes known as Black Facts Of The Day™. Since 1997, BlackFacts.com has been serving up Black History Facts on a daily basis to millions of users and followers on the web and via social media. Learn Black History. Teach Black History. For more Black Facts, join Black Facts Nation at BlackFacts.com/join. Because Black History is 365 Days a Year, and Black Facts Matter!…
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1 March 29 - BlackFacts.com Black History Fact of the Day 1:14
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Play Later Play Later Lists Like LikedMarch 29 is the birthday of Pearl Bailey. She was an American entertainer notable for her sultry singing and mischievous humor. A nightclub performer, Bailey shared the stage with entertainers such as Cab Calloway and Duke Ellington. Bailey also had a television career and even hosted her own show, “The Pearl Bailey Show.” BlackFacts.com is the Internet's longest running Black History Encyclopedia. Our podcast summarizes the vast stories of Black history in daily episodes known as Black Facts Of The Day™. Since 1997, BlackFacts.com has been serving up Black History Facts on a daily basis to millions of users and followers on the web and via social media. Learn Black History. Teach Black History. For more Black Facts, join Black Facts Nation at BlackFacts.com/join. Because Black History is 365 Days a Year, and Black Facts Matter!…
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1 Diane Nash - BlackFacts.com Showcase of Inspiring Black Women 1:27
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Play Later Play Later Lists Like LikedDiane Judith Nash is an American civil rights activist, and a leader and strategist of the student wing of the Civil Rights Movement. Nash was born in 1938 and raised in Chicago. After finishing Hyde Park High School in Chicago, Diane Nash went to Washington, D.C., to attend Howard University. She then went on to major in English at Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee. Nash's campaigns included the first successful civil rights action to integrate lunch counters in Nashville. She is co-founder of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). BlackFacts.com is the Internet's longest running Black History Encyclopedia. Our podcast summarizes the vast stories of Black history in daily episodes known as Black Facts Of The Day™. Since 1997, BlackFacts.com has been serving up Black History Facts on a daily basis to millions of users and followers on the web and via social media. Learn Black History. Teach Black History. For more Black Facts, join Black Facts Nation at BlackFacts.com/join. Because Black History is 365 Days a Year, and Black Facts Matter!…
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1 March 28 - BlackFacts.com Black History Fact of the Day 1:21
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Play Later Play Later Lists Like LikedOn March 28, Bill Russell became the first African American to coach an NBA team. During his career, Russell supported the American civil rights movement, and spoke out against the Vietnam War. He won 11 NBA titles in the 13 seasons that he played with the Boston Celtics, and then he was named the player-coach of the Celtics in 1966. In 2011, Barack Obama awarded Russell the Presidential Medal of Freedom for his accomplishments on the court and in the Civil Rights Movement. BlackFacts.com is the Internet's longest running Black History Encyclopedia. Our podcast summarizes the vast stories of Black history in daily episodes known as Black Facts Of The Day™. Since 1997, BlackFacts.com has been serving up Black History Facts on a daily basis to millions of users and followers on the web and via social media. Learn Black History. Teach Black History. For more Black Facts, join Black Facts Nation at BlackFacts.com/join. Because Black History is 365 Days a Year, and Black Facts Matter!…
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1 Marsha P. Johnson - BlackFactsc.om Showcase of Inspiring Black Women 1:36
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Play Later Play Later Lists Like LikedMarsha P. Johnson was an American gay liberation activist and self-identified drag queen. She was one of the prominent figures in the Stonewall uprising of 1969. She was a founding member of the Gay Liberation Front and co-founded the radical activist group Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries (S.T.A.R.). On the early morning hours of June 28, 1969, the Stonewall uprising occurred. The clashes with police would result in a series of spontaneous demonstrations for a week afterwards. On the first year anniversary of the Stonewall rebellion, on June 28, 1970, Johnson marched in the first Gay Pride rally. Shortly after the 1992 pride parade, Johnson's body was discovered floating in the Hudson River. Police initially ruled the death a suicide but today it is seen as a probable murder. BlackFacts.com is the Internet's longest running Black History Encyclopedia. Our podcast summarizes the vast stories of Black history in daily episodes known as Black Facts Of The Day™. Since 1997, BlackFacts.com has been serving up Black History Facts on a daily basis to millions of users and followers on the web and via social media. Learn Black History. Teach Black History. For more Black Facts, join Black Facts Nation at BlackFacts.com/join. Because Black History is 365 Days a Year, and Black Facts Matter!…
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1 March 27 - BlackFacts.com Black History Fact of the Day 1:16
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Play Later Play Later Lists Like LikedOn March 27, the Black Academy of Arts and Letters was founded. Founded in Boston, the Black Academy of Arts and Letters works to promote, cultivate, and preserve the work of African, African-American, and Caribbean artists in the fields of literature, fine arts, performing arts, visual arts, and cinema. The organization grew out of the American Negro Academy (ANA), which was established in 1897 to publish scholarly works, foster higher education, and promote literature, science, and art by and among African Americans. BlackFacts.com is the Internet's longest running Black History Encyclopedia. Our podcast summarizes the vast stories of Black history in daily episodes known as Black Facts Of The Day™. Since 1997, BlackFacts.com has been serving up Black History Facts on a daily basis to millions of users and followers on the web and via social media. Learn Black History. Teach Black History. For more Black Facts, join Black Facts Nation at BlackFacts.com/join. Because Black History is 365 Days a Year, and Black Facts Matter!…
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1 Odetta Holmes - BlackFacts.com Showcase of Inspiring Black Women 1:44
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Play Later Play Later Lists Like LikedOdetta Holmes was an American singer, actress, guitarist, lyricist, and a civil and human rights activist, often referred to as "The Voice of the Civil Rights Movement". Odetta was born in Birmingham, Alabama, on December 31, 1930. As an important figure in the American folk music of the 50s and 60s, she influenced many of the key figures of the folk-revival, including Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Mavis Staples, and Janis Joplin. Time magazine included her recording of "Take This Hammer" on its list of the 100 Greatest Popular Songs, stating that "Rosa Parks was her No. 1 fan.” BlackFacts.com is the Internet's longest running Black History Encyclopedia. Our podcast summarizes the vast stories of Black history in daily episodes known as Black Facts Of The Day™. Since 1997, BlackFacts.com has been serving up Black History Facts on a daily basis to millions of users and followers on the web and via social media. Learn Black History. Teach Black History. For more Black Facts, join Black Facts Nation at BlackFacts.com/join. Because Black History is 365 Days a Year, and Black Facts Matter!…
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1 March 26 - BlackFacts.com Black History Fact of the Day 1:25
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Play Later Play Later Lists Like LikedOn March 26, William H. Hastie became the first Black federal judge. After graduating with a degree in mathematics from Amherst College in 1925, Hastie taught at the Bordentown Manual School before going on to Harvard University to receive a law degree in 1930. He began his federal career as a solicitor for the Department of the Interior in 1933. Upon the recommendation of Interior Secretary Harold Ickes, Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt nominated Hastie to the U.S. District Court in the Virgin Islands. BlackFacts.com is the Internet's longest running Black History Encyclopedia. Our podcast summarizes the vast stories of Black history in daily episodes known as Black Facts Of The Day™. Since 1997, BlackFacts.com has been serving up Black History Facts on a daily basis to millions of users and followers on the web and via social media. Learn Black History. Teach Black History. For more Black Facts, join Black Facts Nation at BlackFacts.com/join. Because Black History is 365 Days a Year, and Black Facts Matter!…
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1 Marian Anderson - BlackFacts.com Showcase of Inspiring Black Women 1:32
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Play Later Play Later Lists Like LikedMarian Anderson was an American contralto. She performed a wide range of music, from opera to spirituals. Anderson was born in Philadelphia on February 27, 1897. On January 7, 1955, Anderson became the first African-American to perform at the Metropolitan Opera. During her life, she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the Congressional Gold Medal, the National Medal of Arts, and a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. BlackFacts.com is the Internet's longest running Black History Encyclopedia. Our podcast summarizes the vast stories of Black history in daily episodes known as Black Facts Of The Day™. Since 1997, BlackFacts.com has been serving up Black History Facts on a daily basis to millions of users and followers on the web and via social media. Learn Black History. Teach Black History. For more Black Facts, join Black Facts Nation at BlackFacts.com/join. Because Black History is 365 Days a Year, and Black Facts Matter!…
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1 March 25 - BlackFacts.com Black History Fact of the Day 1:37
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Play Later Play Later Lists Like LikedMarch 25 is the Birthday of Aretha Franklin. As a young teen, Franklin performed with her father on his gospel programs in major cities throughout the country and was recognized as a vocal prodigy. She moved to New York City, where Columbia Records executive John Hammond arranged her recording contract. Her first recording session where she sang “Today I Sing the Blues” (1960) remains a classic. As the nation turned towards civil rights, and Black urban music grew in popularity, Franklin was crowned the “Queen of Soul." “Respect,” her 1967 cover of Otis Redding’s spirited composition, became an anthem. BlackFacts.com is the Internet's longest running Black History Encyclopedia. Our podcast summarizes the vast stories of Black history in daily episodes known as Black Facts Of The Day™. Since 1997, BlackFacts.com has been serving up Black History Facts on a daily basis to millions of users and followers on the web and via social media. Learn Black History. Teach Black History. For more Black Facts, join Black Facts Nation at BlackFacts.com/join. Because Black History is 365 Days a Year, and Black Facts Matter!…
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1 Mahalia Jackson - BlackFacts.com Showcase of Inspiring Black Women 1:38
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Play Later Play Later Lists Like LikedMahalia Jackson, born Mahala Jackson, was an American gospel singer, widely considered one of the most influential vocalists of the 20th century. As a child, Mahalia found a home in her church, where Mahalia delivered God's word through song. She moved to Chicago as an adolescent and joined the Johnson Singers, one of the earliest gospel groups. Jackson was heavily influenced by blues singer Bessie Smith. Nationwide recognition came for Jackson in 1947 with the release of "Move On Up a Little Higher," selling two million copies and hitting the number two spot on Billboard charts. BlackFacts.com is the Internet's longest running Black History Encyclopedia. Our podcast summarizes the vast stories of Black history in daily episodes known as Black Facts Of The Day™. Since 1997, BlackFacts.com has been serving up Black History Facts on a daily basis to millions of users and followers on the web and via social media. Learn Black History. Teach Black History. For more Black Facts, join Black Facts Nation at BlackFacts.com/join. Because Black History is 365 Days a Year, and Black Facts Matter!…
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