This Week In Black History – Mar 9th-15th

March 9th:
1841 – Sengbe Pieh, known as Joseph Cinque, and the surviving African slaves who revolted on the ship Amistad are ordered freed by the United States Supreme Court and return to Africa after successfully appealing their mutiny conviction on grounds that they were kidnapped by outlawed slave traders. Their defense attorney is John Quincy Adams, former President of the United States and a Massachusetts senator. Before reaching the Supreme Court, U.S. President Martin Van Buren appeals twice the decision of lower courts to free the slaves. View the original documents of the U.S. Supreme Court at: http://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/amistad/supreme-
court-statement.html

1891 – The North Carolina Agricultural & Technical State University is founded in Greensboro.

1914 – The “New” Southern University campus opens in Scotlandville, Louisiana near Baton Rouge with nine teachers and 47 students.

1966 – Andrew F. Brimmer becomes the first African American governor on the Federal Reserve Board.

March 10th:
1863 – Two U.S. African American infantry regiments, the First and Second South Carolina Volunteers, capture and occupy Jacksonville, Florida, causing panic along the Southern seaboard. These regiments are not to be confused with the confederate army First South Carolina Volunteers Infantry Regiment.

1969 – James Earl Ray pleads guilty in the first degree to the murder of Dr. Martin L. King, Jr. and will be sentenced to 99 years in prison. The House Select Committee on Assassinations will later state that although it believes Ray shot King, Ray was part of a larger conspiracy. Ray will later repudiate that plea, maintaining his innocence until his death.

1972 – Three thousand delegates and five thousand observers attend the first African American political convention in Gary, Indiana. The NAACP and other groups withdraw from the convention after the adoption of resolutions that are critical of busing and the state of Israel.

March 11th:
1861 – The Confederate Congress, meeting in Montgomery, Alabama, adopts a constitution which declares that the passage of any “law denying or impairing the right of property in Negro slaves is prohibited.”

1874 – Frederick Douglass is named president of the failing Freedmen’s Bank.

1948 – Reginald Weir becomes the first African American to play in the U.S. Indoor Lawn Tennis Association Championship. He won his first match, but was eliminated on March 13th.

1956 – A manifesto denouncing the Supreme Court ruling on segregation in public schools, is issued by one hundred southern senators and representatives.

1959 – “A Raisin in the Sun” becomes the first play written by an African American woman, Lorraine Hansberry, to open on Broadway. The play will run for 19 months at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre, and be named “Best Play” by the New York Drama Critics Circle, and bring Lloyd Richards to Broadway as the first African American director in modern times.

March 12th:
1791 – Benjamin Banneker and Pierre Charles L’Enfant are commissioned to plan and develop Washington, DC.

1945 – New York becomes the first state to prohibit discrimination by race and creed in employment.

1964 – Malcolm X resigns from the Nation of Islam.

March 13th:
1861 – Jefferson Davis signs a bill authorizing the use of slaves as soldiers in the Confederate army.

1943 – Frank Dixon becomes the first great African American miler in track as he wins the Columbian Mile in New York City. Dixon ran the mile in the record time of 4 minutes, 9.6 seconds.

1946 – Colonel Benjamin O. Davis, Jr. becomes the first African American to command an United States Air Force base, when he assumes command of Lockbourne Air Force Base in Ohio.

1984 – James L. Usry is elected the first African American mayor of Atlantic City, New Jersey. He served as mayor until 1990. A former member of the Harlem Globetrotters, he became an educator before entering politics.

March 14th:
1794 – Eli Whitney patents the cotton gin, making it possible to clean 50 pounds of cotton a day, compared to a pound a day before the invention. This made cotton king and increase the demand for slave labor.

1917 – The first training camp for “colored” officers is established by the U.S. Army in Des Moines, Iowa, after a long lobbying effort by the NAACP, led by Joel E. Spingarn and James Weldon Johnson. The camp will issue 678 officer commissions to African Americans, compared to 380,000 African American enlisted men mobilized in World War l.

1967 – In the first NFL-AFL common draft, the Baltimore Colts pick Bubba Smith as the first pick.

March 15th:
1897 – The Fifty-fifth Congress (1897-99) convenes. Only one African American congressman is in attendance: George H. White, of North Carolina.

1933 – The NAACP begins a coordinated attack on segregation and discrimination, filing a suit against the University of North Carolina on behalf of Thomas Hocutt. The case is lost on a technicality after the president of an African American college refuses to certify the records of the plaintiff.

1968 – “LIFE” magazine calls Jimi Hendrix “the most spectacular guitarist in the world.”

1991 – Four Los Angeles police officers-Sergeant Stacey Koon and Officers Laurence Powell, Timothy Wind and Theodore Briseno, are charged with felony assault and related charges arising from the Rodney King beating.