Black History Month

Black History Day 29

1. In 1961, Leontyne Price received a 42 minute ovation when she debuted with the Metropolitan Opera Company.
2. The FIRST black settlers in the American colonies worked as indentured servants. John Rolfe’s diary records 20 black indentured servants in Jamestown, Virginia in 1619.
3. The team which once featured the talents of Goose Tatum, Sweet Willie Oliver and Meadowlark Lemon is called The Harlem Globetrotters. Nat “Sweetwater” Clifton, Wilt Chamberlain and Connie Hawkins were one-time team members.
4. In 1965, the American Medical Association’s Distinguished Service Award went to surgeon Jane C. Wright. She succeeded her father, Louis T. Wright, as Harlem Hospital’s Director of Cancer Research and pioneered the field.
5. The LARGEST country in Africa is the country of Sudan which covers 967,500 square miles of northeast Africa.
6. Approximately 20% of the cowboys on the American frontier were black. As pioneers they played a major role in settling the new west.
7. The FIRST African American to receive the National Medal of Technology was Frederick M. Jones in 1991, which was 30 years after his death.
8. The FIRST black Pony Express riders were George Monroe and William Robinson. Their westward route began in the state of Missouri.
9. The singer featured on Motown label’s FIRST gold record was William “Smokey” Robinson in 1960. He later became the company’s Vice President under Berry Gordy Jr.
10. The FIRST black Business Woman of the Year was Pearline Motley in 1993. She was the manager of the Federal Women’s Program of the Agricultural Stabilization and Conservation Service.

…and this hereby concludes the recognition celebration for Black History Month. Now that you know all that YOUR RACE has achieved, always always WALK WITH PRIDE.

Black History Day 28

1. The first black woman All-American basketball player was Missouri Arledge in 1955. More commonly known as “Big Mo”, she played for Philander Smith College.
2. The FIRST black mayor of Los Angeles was Thomas Bradley in 1972. He served in that post for 20 years and retired in 1992.
3. In 1939, Fredrick M. Jones received a patent for a machine that dispensed movie tickets and change. Think about that the next time you go to a movie.
4. The Tuskegee Experiment trained African American pilots for combat in World War II in 1942.
5. The Martin Luther Jr. Memorial Center is housed in Atlanta, GA., which is where the Ebenezer Baptist church is located as well as Freedom Hall.
6. In 1869, ex-slave Fannie Jackson Coppin became Principal of the Institute for Colored Youth in Pennsylvania. Today this school is now Cheyney Univ.
7. The FIRST black poet to speak out against slavery was George Moses Horton in his 1829 volume of poetry Hope of Liberty.
8. In 1992, Dominique Dawes and Elizabeth Okino became the first black American athletes to compete in gymnastics.
9. Madame C.J. Walker was born in Delta, Louisiana with the birth name of Sarah Breedlove.
10. Half the WORLD’S diamonds are produced in the African countries of South Africa, Botswana and Zaire.

Black History Day 27

1. The George Washington Carver National Monument is located in Missouri, near the city of Diamond. It is the FIRST National Monument honoring an African American.
2. The 20th century statesman who became Undersecretary General of the United Nations in 1968 was Dr. Ralph Johnson Bunche.
3. The journalist who won an Emmy for her reporting on PBS-TV’s MacNeil / Lehrer News Hour is Charlayne Hunter-Gault, who was also one of the FIRST black students at the University Of Georgia.
4. The capital city of Senegal is Dakar, port on Africa’s western coast.
5. The amendment to the United States Constitution which granted black Americans citizenship and equal protection under the law was the Fourteenth amendment. It passed on July 28, 1868.
6. In 1988, Ron Brown was the FIRST black chairman of the Democratic Party and in 1993 he was appointed to the Presidential Cabinet as the Secretary Of Commerce.
7. Blenda J. Wilson was Chancellor of the University of Michigan at Dearborn from 1988 to 1992. She was the first woman to head a public university in Michigan.
8. The Ivory Coast [of Africa] received its name for its elephant tusks obtained mainly from forest elephants.
9. Newport Gardner was one of the first noted black music teachers in America. He taught singing and his school (est. in 1791) attracted both black and white students.
10. The US Supreme Court decision which declared school segregation unconstitutional was Brown v. Board Of Education of Topeka in 1954.

Black History Day 26

1. The first black member of the New York Stock Exchange was Joseph Searles III in 1970.
2. The first African American to serve on the board of the New York Stock Exchange was Jerome H. Holland.
3. In Africa, the Nile river flows into the Mediterranean Sea.
4. The first African American in the 19th century to achieve national recognition as a major poet was Paul Lawrence Dunbar. He worked as an elevator operator when his first volume of poetry was published in 1893.
5. In the 1896 case of Plessy v. Ferguson, Homer Plessy was a man of “mixed” racial heritage who sued to have the separate but equal law overturned in Louisiana.
6. In 1983, Charles Rangel became the first black ‘Deputy Whip’ in the House Of Representatives.
7. In 1951, Lillian W. Burke was admitted to the Ohio bar and she became Ohio’s first black judge in 1969.
8. The original inhabitants of the African rain forest are the Pygmies – ethnic groups, primarily hunter-gatherers, who are distinguished by their small stature.
9. The first African American to sing in Boston’s Symphony Hall was Roland Hayes in 1917.
10. The Black Codes were passed by the Southern legislatures to govern the conduct of slaves and later, to restrict the rights of blacks

Black History Day 25

1. In 1961, Ralph Abernathy succeeded Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. as the head of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.
2. Miriam Benjamin invented the ‘gong’ signal system which was patented in 1888.
3. The SIX countries that make up North Africa are Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Morocco, Tunisia and Western Sahara.
4. In 1808, President Thomas Jefferson signed a bill into law that made it illegal to import slaves into the US. Of course most southern states refused to enforce the law.
5. In 1976, Patricia Roberts Harris was appointed as Secretary of Housing and Urban Development by President Jimmy Carter, making her the FIRST black female Cabinet member.
6. In 1904, Mary McLeod Bethune opened a small Florida school for black children. In 1923, the school merged with The Cookman Institute and became Bethune-Cookman College in Daytona Beach, Florida.
7. Oil is a “very” important resource in North Africa. The Middle East and North Africa supply 37% of the world’s oil.
8. The Civil Rights Act of 1965, more commonly known as the Voting Rights Act, outlawed the use of literacy tests and poll taxes that prevented blacks from voting.
9. The first Dial Award went to Herschel Walker as the high school scholar/athlete of the year in 1979. The Dial award is presented to outstanding high school athletes.
10. In 1960, Marion Barry was the first National Chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee [SNCC] and in 1979 he was elected Mayor of Washington, D.C.