This Week In Black History Mar 23 – 30th

March 23rd:
1968 – Rev. Walter Fauntroy, a former aide of Martin Luther King Jr., becomes the first non-voting congressional delegate from the District of Columbia since the Reconstruction period.

March 24th:
1941 – “Native Son,” a play adapted from Richard Wright’s novel of the same name, opens at the St. James Theatre in New York City.

March 25th:
1807 – The British Parliament abolishes the African slave trade. Although slavery was abolished within England in 1772, it was still allowed in the British colonies, as was the slave trade. The continued slave trade was not only accepted, but considered essential to the power and prosperity of the British Empire. English slave-merchants made fortunes carrying slaves from Africa to the British colonies in North America and the Caribbean, and many of England’s industries, notably textiles and sugar refining, depended on raw materials produced by slave labor on colonial plantations. Still, there were opponents, and in 1787, they launched a nationwide campaign to seek the abolition of the slave trade.

1965 – The Selma-to-Montgomery march ended with rally of some fifty thousand at Alabama capitol. One of the marchers, a white civil rights worker named Viola Liuzzo, is shot to death on U.S. Highway 80 after the rally by white terrorists. Three Klansmen are convicted of violating her civil rights and sentenced to ten years in prison.

March 26th:
1872 – Thomas J. Martin is awarded a patent for the fire extinguisher.

1910 – William H. Lewis is appointed assistant attorney general of the United States.

1937 – William Hastie is appointed to a federal judgeship in the Virgin Islands. With the appointment, Hastie became the first African American to serve on the federal bench in the U.S. or its territories. Judge Hastie served on the bench for two years then became dean and professor of law at Howard University in Washington DC.

March 27th:
1969 – The Black Academy of Arts and Letters is founded at a meeting in Boston, Massachusetts. Dr. C. Eric Lincoln, professor of religion and sociology at Union Theological Seminary, is elected president of the organization.

March 28th:
1870 – Jonathan S. Wright becomes the first African American State Supreme Court Justice in South Carolina.

March 29th:
1968 – Students seize building on the campus of Bowie State College in Bowie, Maryland.

March 30th:
1869 – The 15th Amendment to the Constitution is ratified, which guarantees men, the right to vote regardless of “race, color or previous condition of servitude.” Despite ratification of the amendment, it will be almost 100 years before African Americans become “universally” enfranchised. Editor’s Note: The entire African American population of Washington DC (approximately 300,000+ of the 550,000+ people who live there) is still constitutionally denied any voting rights or self-government in the United States. This is a gaping exception to a so-called “universal” practice.

1995 – Tens of thousands of Rwandan refugees, fleeing violence in Burundi, begin a two-day trek to sanctuary in Tanzania.