KiteCD Educational Resources - Black History Month

Black History Month

Significant Events in African American History

1620 - The first public school specifically intended for blacks and Native Americans was established in Virginia.
1754 - Benjamin Banneker, despite never having seen a clock, invented the first clock ever built entirely in America.
1783 - Deborah Sampson was discharged by General Washington from the Continental army. She had served for three years in a Massachusetts regiment disguised as a man, under the assumed name of Robert Shirtliffe. During her services she had received both sword and gun wounds.
1818 - Frederick Douglass, an abolitionist, was born in February.
1820 - Harriet Tubman was born at about this time. The exact date will most likely never be known.
1827 - Freedom’s Journal was founded, the first anti-slavery newspaper published by African Americans.
1834 - Henry Blair became the first African American to receive a patent. He invented a corn harvester.
1843 - Isabella Van Wagner, a former slave, changed her name to Sojourner Truth. She became a well known abolitionist. She also fought for equal rights for women.
1849 - Harriet Tubman escaped slavery.
1850 - The Fugitive Slave Act was signed into law in September 1850 by President Millard Fillmore. This law gave slave owners the right to go north and recapture blacks accused of being runaway slaves
1857 - The Supreme Court ruled that a slave named Dred Scott could not sue for his freedom because he was not a citizen, he was property.
1864 - Sojourner Truth was welcomed to the White House by President Abraham Lincoln.
1866 - The Civil Rights Act of 1866, giving blacks the right to vote, after President Andrew Johnson’s veto of the bill was overridden by Congress.
1870 - Hiram K. Revels of Mississippi became the first African American to be elected to the Senate.
1895 - Frederick Douglass died.
1896 - The Supreme Court ruled that southern laws, known as the Jim Crow laws, requiring "separate but equal" facilities for black citizens should be upheld.
1875 - The Civil Rights Act of 1875 was passed by Congress integrating hotels, theaters, and restaurants.
1908 - Jack Johnson became the first black man to win the World Heavy Weight Boxing Championship.
1908 - The Jim Crow Laws were ruled unconstitutional.
1910 - Granville T. Woods, the inventor of the railway telegraphy, which conductors and engineers could use on moving trains to communicate with each other, and the "third rail" safety device used for electric trains and subways, died.
1913 - Harriet Tubman died.
1918-1928 - The Harlem Renaissance: a great cultural movement in Harlem, New York, influenced all of America with its jazz, poetry, art, and literary works. It popularized many of the creations by Langston Hughes, Wallace Thurman, Ethel Waters, Duke Ellington, and many other talented individuals.
1920The most famous black baseball league, The Negro National League, was formed. It was so popular that it sometimes attracted a greater crowd than the major leagues.
1929 - Martin Luther King Jr. was born on January 15.
1936 - On August 16 in Berlin, Germany, Jesse Owens won four gold medals in the Olympics. Check out the children’s book, A Picture Book Of Jesse Owens, by David A. Adler. (amazon.com has it)
1955 - Rosa Parks took a seat at the front of a public bus on December 1 in Montgomery, Alabama. When she would not give up her seat to a white man, the bus was stopped and Rosa Parks was arrested.
1957 - Nine African American students, later known as The Little Rock Nine, were prevented from attending an all-white high school in Little Rock, Arkansas. President Eisenhower sent troops to uphold a court order that they were permitted to attend. It was the first time since the Reconstruction that federal troops were used to defend the rights of black citizens.
1960 - Six year old Ruby Bridges was escorted to an all white school by federal marshals after a judge ordered its desegregation.
1963 - Martin Luther King Jr. spoke at the largest civil rights demonstration ever held.
1964 - On December 10, Martin Luther King Jr. became the youngest recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. He gave the award money of $54,000 to groups supporting civil rights.
1964 - The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson. From that point forward, it was illegal for employers to discriminate on the basis of race, sex, color, religion or national origin.
1966 - Bobby Seale and Huey P. newton formed the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense. This organization’s original purpose was to protect African American neighborhoods from police brutality.
1968 - April 4th, Martin Luther King Jr. was assasinated.
1971 - April 20, the Supreme Court upheld that bussing and redistricting were valid tools to integrate American schools.
1974 - On October 11, a proclamation by the governor of Ohio recognized Granville T. Woods as the "greatest electrician in the world."
1979 - On October 4, Jesse Jackson met with P.L.O.’s Yasir Arafat in Beirut to discuss the middle east.
1983 - President Ronald Reagan declared Martin Luther King Jr’s birthday a national holiday on November 2.
1983 - September 30, the space Shuttle Challenger launched at night for the first time carrying America’s first black astronaut, Guion Bluford, into orbit.
1993 - One of the creators of bebop, trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie, died on January 6 of cancer.

1993

Martin Luther King Jr.

2008 - November 4, Barack Obama became the first black person to be elected President of the United States of America.
2009 - January 20, Barack Obama is inaugurated as the first African American president of the United States of America.

Biographies

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