On this day, Tiger Woods captured his third Masters title at Augusta National Golf Club, finishing three strokes ahead of Retief Goosen. This victory made Woods the third golfer in history to win back-to-back Masters tournaments, cementing his legacy as one of the greatest golfers of all time and breaking barriers in a sport with a long history of racial exclusion.

Members of Columbia University’s Student Afro-American Society (SAS) seized the Columbia College admissions office to protest the university’s lack of support for Black students. They demanded the creation of a special admissions board and Black administrative staff to increase Black student enrollment and representation. This direct action was part of a broader wave of student activism in the late 1960s pushing for institutional accountability and racial justice in higher education.

James Hutton Brew, often called the “Pioneer of West African Journalism,” died on this day in 1915. A lawyer, politician, and journalist from the Gold Coast (modern-day Ghana), Brew used the press as a powerful tool for political advocacy and social change. He founded The Western Echo newspaper in the 1870s and became a leading voice against colonial injustice and exploitation. Brew’s legacy laid the foundation for press freedom and intellectual resistance in West Africa.

In a pivotal decision on April 14, 1873, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the Slaughterhouse Cases that the Fourteenth Amendment only protected federal—not state—civil rights. This narrow interpretation began the systematic weakening of the Fourteenth Amendment’s power to protect formerly enslaved people and Black citizens from state-level discrimination. The ruling limited federal intervention in civil rights abuses by the states, undermining key protections envisioned during Reconstruction.

South Carolina voters approved a new state constitution by a wide margin—70,758 to 27,228—and elected a new slate of state officers, including Francis L. Cardozo, the first Black person to hold a cabinet-level position in the state as Secretary of State. The 1868 constitution was one of the most progressive of its time, mandating integrated public education and embedding a strong bill of rights. It declared: “Distinctions on account of race or color, in any case whatsoever, shall be prohibited.” This landmark document reflected the aspirations of newly enfranchised Black citizens during Reconstruction.

On the evening of April 14, 1865, President Abraham Lincoln was shot by Confederate sympathizer John Wilkes Booth while attending a play at Ford’s Theater in Washington, D.C. Lincoln’s assassination, just days after the end of the Civil War, shocked the nation. For African Americans, his death was deeply felt—Lincoln had signed the Emancipation Proclamation and symbolized hope for freedom and reconstruction. His assassination also marked a turning point that would complicate the fight for Black rights during the turbulent Reconstruction era that followed.

The first abolitionist society in the United States, the Society for the Relief of Free Negroes Unlawfully Held in Bondage, was organized in Philadelphia on April 14, 1775. Led by both Black and white activists, including prominent Quakers, the society aimed to protect free African Americans and advocate for the end of slavery. It later became known as the Pennsylvania Abolition Society, with Benjamin Franklin serving as its president after the Revolutionary War.