On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks refused to change seats on a Montgomery, Alabama, bus. On December 5, blacks began a boycott of the bus system, which continued until shortly after December 13, 1956, when the U.S. Supreme Court outlawed bus segregation in the city.
President Lincoln, in message to Congress, recommended the use of federal bonds to provide compensation for states that abolished slavery before 1900.
On this date in 1992, Pearl Stewart becomes the first black woman editor of the “Oakland Tribune, which has a circulation of over 100,000.
On this date in 1987, James Baldwin dies. James Baldwin was born on August 2, 1924, and educated in New York. His first novel, Go Tell It on the Mountain, appeared in 1953 to excellent reviews and immediately was recognized as establishing a profound and permanent new voice in American letters.
Korematsu v. United States (1944) Parties involved: Fred Korematsu, a twenty year old Japanese American who was born in Oakland, California decided that he did not want to be interned in a relocation camp. Korematsu ignored the relocation order and went into hiding but was arrested and tried.
On this date in 1940, Richard Franklin Lennox Pryor III was born in Peoria, Illinois where he was raised by his grandmother in a brothel that she ran.
On this date in 1935, Louis Allen Rawls AKA Lou Rawls born in Chicago. He is a three-time Grammy-winning singer and has been a popular black MOR singer since the Fifties.
On this date in 18792, Painter, Minnie Evans was born.
On this date in 1878, Founder of the NAACP, Arthur Spingarn was born.
On this date in 1877, Jonathan Jasper Wright was the first Black state supreme court justice. He resigned on this day from the state supreme court in South Carolina after the overthrow of the Reconstruction government, and died in obscurity of tuberculosis.
On this date in 1874, T.J. Byrd patents Car couplings. Patent# 157,370
ON this date in 1873, Forty-third Congress (1873-75) convened with seven Black congressmen: Richard H. Cain, Robert Brown Elliott, Joseph H. Rainey and Alonzo J. Ransier, South Carolina; James T. Rapier, Alabama; Josiah T. Walls, Florida; John R. Lynch, Mississippi.
On this date in 1873, Mifflin Wister Gibb elected city judge in Little Rock and became the first Black to hold such a position.
On this date in 1873, Bennett College, Wiley College, and Alabama State College were founded.
On this date in 1862, President Lincoln, in message to Congress, recommended the use of federal bonds to provide compensation for states that abolished slavery before 1900.
On this date in 1774, The Continental Congress will no longer allow the importation of slaves.
On this date in 1641, Massachusetts became the first colony to give statutory recognition to slavery. Other colonies followed: Connecticut 1650; Virginia, 1661; Maryland, 1663; New York and New Jersey, 1664; South Carolina, 1682; Rhode Island and Pennsylvania, 1700; North Carolina. 1715; Georgia, 1750.
