01 April 1867 – 1984

1867 – African Americans vote in a municipal election in Tuscumbia, Alabama.  Military officials set aside the election pending clarification on electoral procedures.

1868 – Hampton Institute is founded in Hampton, Virginia, by General Samuel Chapman Armstrong.

1895 – Alberta Hunter is born in Memphis, Tennessee.  She will run away from home at the age of twelve and go to Chicago, Illinois to become a Blues singer.  She will work in a variety of clubs until the violence in the Chicago club scene prompts her to move to New York City.  There she will record for a variety of blues labels. She will write a lot of her own songs and songs for other performers.  Her song “Down Hearted Blues,” will become Bessie Smith’s first record in 1923.  She will perform in Europe and America until 1956, when she will retire from performing.  She will work for more than twenty years as a nurse in a New York hospital and in 1977, at the age of 82, surprisingly return to the stage.  She will perform until she joins the ancestors in 1984.

1905 – The British East African Protectorate becomes the colony of Kenya.

1917 – Scott Joplin dies in New York City.  One of the early developers of ragtime and the author of “Maple Leaf Rag,” Joplin also created several rag-time and grand operas, the most noteworthy of which, “Treemonisha,” consumed his later years in an attempt to have it published and performed.

1924 – The British Crown takes over Northern Rhodesia from the British South Africa Company.

1929 – Morehouse College, Spelman College and Atlanta University are merged, creating a ‘new’ Atlanta University.  Dr. John Hope of Morehouse College, is named president.

1930 – Zawditu, the first reigning female monarch of Ethiopia, joins the ancestors.  She was the second daughter of Emperor Menelik II.  She had been Empress of Ethiopia since 1916.

1939 – Rudolph Bernard Isley is born in Cincinnati, Ohio.  He will become a singer at the age of six with his brothers O’Kelly, Ronald and Vernon Isley and form the group, The Isley Brothers.  They will leave Cincinnati in 1956 and go to New York City to pursue their musical career.  Rudolph and his brothers will obtain fame and success nationally and internationally earning numerous platinum and gold albums which contain such classic hits as “Shout,” “Twist and Shout,” “It’s Your Thing,” “Who’s That Lady,” “Fight the Power,” “For the Love of You,” “Harvest For The World,” “Live It Up,” “Footsteps in the Dark,” “Work to Do,” “Don’t Say Good Night” and many others.

1950 – Charles R. Drew, surgeon and developer of the blood bank concept, joins the ancestors after an automobile accident near Burlington, North Carolina at the age of 45.

1951 – Oscar Micheaux joins the ancestors in Charlotte, North Carolina.  Micheaux formed his own film production company, Oscar Micheaux Corporation, to produce his novel “The Homesteader” and over 30 other movies, notably “Birthright,” which was adapted from a novel by Pulitzer Prize-winning author T.S. Stribling, and “Body and Soul,” which marked the film debut of Paul Robeson.

1966 – The first World Festival of Negro Arts opens in Dakar, Senegal, with the U.S. African American delegation having one of the largest number of representatives.  First prizes are won by poet Robert Hayden, engraver William Majors, actors Ivan Dixon and Abbey Lincoln, gospel singer Mahalia Jackson, jazz trumpeter Louis Armstrong, and sociologist Kenneth Clark.

1984 – Marvin Gaye joins the ancestors after being shot to death by his father, Marvin Gaye, Sr. in Los Angeles, California, one day before his forty-fifth birthday.  The elder Gaye will plead guilty to voluntary manslaughter, and receive probation.   Marvin Gaye was one of the most talented soul singers of all time.   Unlike most soul greats, Gaye’s artistic inclinations evolved over the course of three decades, moving from hard-driving soul-pop to funk and dance grooves.

02 April 1855 – 1984

1855 – John Mercer Langston is elected clerk of Brownhelm, Ohio, township.  He will be considered the first African American elected to public office.

1918 – Charles White is born in Chicago, Illinois.  An artist who will work with traditional materials (pen, ink, oil on canvas and lithography), White will transform the image of African Americans and earn praise from critics and artists alike. White will receive dozens of awards and his work will be collected by museums on three continents and major corporations.

1932 – Bill Pickett, a well-known cowboy who was acclaimed by President Theodore Roosevelt as “one of the best trained ropers and riders the West has produced,” joins the ancestors.  Pickett performed as a bulldogger in Europe, Mexico, and the United States, where he was often assisted by two relatively unknown white cowboys, Tom Mix and Will Rogers.

1939 – Marvin Gaye, Jr. is born in Washington, DC.  He will sign with Motown in 1962 and begin a 22-year career that includes hits “Pride and Joy,” duets with Mary Wells and Tammi Terrell, as well as best-selling albums exploring his social consciousness (“What’s Going On”) and sexuality (“Let’s Get It On,” “Midnight Love, and “Sexual Healing”).

1969 – The Milwaukee Bucks of the National Basketball Association signs Lew Alcindor for a reported $1,400,000 five-year contract.  Alcindor will later change his name to Kareem Abdul-Jabar and his team to the Los Angeles Lakers.

1984 – Coach John Thompson of Georgetown University becomes the first African American coach to win the NCAA Division I basketball championship.  The team, led by Patrick Ewing, wins over the University of Houston 84-75.

03 April 1865 – 1996

1865 – The Fifth Massachusetts Colored Cavalry and units of the Twenty-fifth Corps are in the vanguard of Union troops entering Richmond.  The Second Division of the Twenty-Fifth Corps help to chase Robert E. Lee’s army from Petersburg to Appomattox Court House, April 3-10.  The African American division and white Union soldiers are advancing on General Lee’s trapped army with fixed bayonets when the Confederate troops surrender.

1889 – The Savings Bank of the Order of True Reformers opens in Richmond, Virginia.

1934 – Richard Mayhew is born in Amityville, New York.  A student at the Art Students League, Brooklyn Museum Art School, and Columbia University, as well as the Academia in Florence, Italy, Mayhew will be one of the most respected and revolutionary landscape artists of the 20th century.  He will also form “Spiral,” a forum for artistic innovation and exploration of African American artists’ relationships to the civil rights movement, with fellow artists Romare Bearden, Charles Alston Hale Woodruff, and others.

1936 – James Harrell McGriff is born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.  He will be surrounded by music as a child, with both parents playing piano and cousins Benny Golson and Harold Melvin, who were pursuing their own musical talents.  He will be influenced to play the organ by neighbor Richard “Groove” Holmes, with whom he will study privately. He will also study organ at Philadelphia’s Combe College of Music and at Julliard. In addition, he will study with Milt Buckner and with classical organist Sonny Gatewood.  His first hit will be with his arrangement of “I Got A Woman”, on the Sue label, which made it to the top five on both Billboard’s Rhythm and Blues and Pop charts. There will be close to 100 albums with Jimmy McGriff’s name at the top as leader. He will record for Sue, Solid State, United Artists, Blue Note, Groove Merchant, Milestone, Headfirst and Telarc. Over his prolific career, he will record with George Benson, Kenny Burrell, Frank Foster, J.J. Johnson and a two-organ jam affair with the late “Groove” Holmes.

1944 – The U.S. Supreme Court (Smith v. Allwright) said that “white primaries” that exclude African Americans are unconstitutional.

1950 – Carter G. Woodson, “the father of black history,” joins the ancestors in Washington, DC at the age of 74.

1961 – Eddie Murphy is born in Brooklyn, New York.  A stand-up comedian and star of “Saturday Night Live” before pursuing a movie career, Murphy will become one of the largest African American box office draws.  Among his most successful movies will be “48 Hours,” “Trading Places,” “Beverly Hills Cop,” “Coming to America,” and “Harlem Nights.”

1963 – Led by Martin Luther King, Jr., the Birmingham anti-segregation campaign begins.  Before it is over, more than 2,000 demonstrators, including King, will be arrested. The Birmingham Manifesto, issued by Fred Shuttlesworth of the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights the morning of the campaign, summarizes the frustration and hopes of the protesters: “The patience of an oppressed people cannot endure forever…. This is Birmingham’s moment of truth in which every citizen can play his part in her larger destiny.”

1964 – Malcolm X speaks at a CORE-sponsored meeting on “The Negro Revolt – What Comes Next?”  In his speech “The Ballot or Bullet,” Malcolm warns of a growing black nationalism that will no longer tolerate patronizing white political action.

1968 – Less than 24 hours before he is assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee, civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. delivers his famous “mountaintop” speech to a rally of striking sanitation workers.

1990 – Jazz singer Sarah Vaughan joins the ancestors in suburban Los Angeles, California, at the age of 66.

1996 – An Air Force jetliner carrying Commerce Secretary Ron Brown and American business executives crashes in Croatia, killing all 35 people aboard.

04 April 1915 – 1974

1915 – McKinley Morganfield is born in Rolling Fork, Mississippi. He will be discovered in 1941 by two music archivists from the Library of Congress, traveling the back roads of Mississippi looking for the legendary Robert Johnson.   They recorded two of Morganfield’s songs and lit a fire in the ambitious young man.  He will leave Mississippi for Chicago two years later to become a blues singer better known as “Muddy Waters.” He will join the ancestors on April 30, 1983 in Chicago, Illinois.

1928 – Maya Angelou is born in St. Louis, Missouri.  She will become the first African American streetcar conductor in San Francisco, a dancer, nightclub singer, editor, and teacher of music and drama  in Ghana and professor of American Studies at Wake Forest University.  She will also become noted as the author of a multi-volume autobiographical series, as well as several volumes of poetry.

1938 – Vera Mae Smart Grosvenor, who will become the author of the popular and influential cookbook “Vibration Cooking”(1970), is born in Fairfax, South Carolina.

1939 – Hugh Masekela is born in South Africa.  He will become a musician and band leader.  He will be a major force in South African Jazz, and will become known throughout the world.

1942 – Richard Parsons is born in New York City.  In 1990, he will be named chief executive officer of Dime Savings Bank, the first African American CEO of a large, non-minority U.S. savings institution.

1959 – The Federation of Mali is formed, consisting of Senegal & the territory of Mali in the French Sudan.  It will dissolve in 1960.

1960 – Senegal and Mali gain separate independence.

1968 – Acknowledged leader of the U.S. civil rights movement, Martin Luther King, Jr. joins the ancestors after being assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee.  His death will result in a national day of mourning and the postponement of the beginning of the baseball season.  Over 30,000 people will form a funeral procession behind his coffin, pulled by two Georgia mules.   King’s death will also set off racially motivated civil disturbances in 160 cities leaving 82 people dead and causing $ 69 million in property damage.  President Lyndon B. Johnson declares Sunday, April 6, a national day of mourning and orders all U.S. flags on government buildings in all U.S. territories and possessions to fly at half-mast.

1972 – Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., former congressman and civil rights leader, joins the ancestors in Miami, Florida at the age of 63.

1974 – Hank Aaron ties the baseball career home run record set by Babe Ruth, when he hits his 714th home run in Cincinnati, Ohio.

05 April 1839 – 2000

1839 – Robert Smalls is born into slavery in Beaufort, South Carolina.  He will become a Civil War hero by sailing an armed Confederate steamer out of Charleston Harbor and presenting it to the Union Navy.  He will later become a three-term congressman from his state.

1856 – Booker Taliaferro Washington is born a slave near Hale’s Ford, Virginia.  He will become a world reknown educator, founder of Tuskegee Institute.  He will become one of the most famous African American educators and leaders of the 19th century.  His message of acquiring practical skills and emphasizing self-help over political rights will be popular among whites and segments of the African American community.  His 1901 autobiography, “Up From Slavery”, which details his rise to success despite numerous obstacles, will become a best-seller and further enhances his public image as a self-made man.  As popular as he will be in some circles, Washington will be aggressively opposed by critics such as W.E.B. Du Bois and William Monroe Trotter. He will join the ancestors on November 14, 1915.  He will become the first African American to be honored on a U.S. postage stamp.

1879 – Charles W. Follis is born in Cloverdale, Virginia.  He is the first African American to play professional football.  He will play halfback for the Blues of Shelby, Ohio in 1904.   The Blues were part of the American Professional Football League, a forerunner of the National Football League.

1915 – Jess Willard defeats Jack Johnson for the heavyweight boxing crown in twenty three rounds.

1934 – Stanley Turrentine is born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.  He will become a jazz saxophonist and in 1953, will replace the famed John Coltrane in the popular big band of Earl Bostic.  After a three-year army stint, which affords him his only formal musical training, Turrentine comes to prominence on the New York Jazz scene as a member of Max Roach’s group in 1959.   Over the years, Turrentine’s recordings will combine musical energies with friends such as Ron Carter, Roland Hanna, Ray Charles, Freddie Hubbard, Jon Hendricks, George Benson, Cedar Walton, Herbie Hancock, Kenny Burrell, Milt Jackson, Joe Sample, Shirley Scott, Jimmy Smith, Grady Tate, and many others.  He will be nominated for the Grammy Award four times.

1937 – Colin Powell is born in New York City. He will become a highly decorated Army officer, receiving the Bronze Star and Purple Heart during the Vietnam War, and will be later promoted to four-star general in 1988.  He will become the first African American to serve as the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff for the U.S. rmed Forces.

1956 – Booker T. Washington becomes the only African American honored twice on a U.S. postage stamp. To commemorate the centennial of his birth, the U.S. Postal Service issues a stamp depicting the cabin where he was born.

1967 – Philadelphia ’76er Wilt Chamberlain sets a NBA record of 41 rebounds in a single game.

1976 – FBI documents, released in response to a freedom of information suit, reveal that the government mounted an intensive campaign against civil rights organizations in the sixties.  In a letter dated August 25, 1967, the FBI said the government operation, called COINTELPRO, was designed “to expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit or otherwise neutralize the activities of Black nationalists, hate-type groups, their leadership, spokesmen, membership and supporters, and to counter their propensity for violence and civil disorders.”  A later telegram specifically named the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference as organizations having “radical and violence prone leaders, members and followers.”

1977 – Gertrude Downing receives a patent for the corner cleaner attachment.

1984 – Kareem Abdul-Jabbar breaks Wilt Chamberlain’s all-time career scoring record of 31,419 points (31,421).

1990 – Seven African American journalists are inducted into the newly created Hall of Fame of the National Association of Black Journalists in Washington, DC.  Dubbed “pioneers of mainstream journalism,” the inductees include Dorothy Butler Gilliam of the Washington Post, Malvin R. Goode of ABC News, Mal H. Johnson of Cox Broadcasting, Gordon Parks of Life Magazine, Ted Poston of the New York Post, Norma Quarles of Cable News Network, and Carl T. Rowan of King Features Syndicate.   Twelve Pulitzer Prize winners are also honored at the awards ceremonies.

2000 – Ending a two-year investigation, an independent counsel clears Labor Secretary Alexis Herman of allegations that she had solicited $ 250,000 in illegal campaign contributions.

06 April 1798 – 1994

1798 – James P. Beckwourth is born in Fredericksburg, Virginia.  He will become a noted scout in the western United States and will discover a pass in the Sierra Nevada mountains between the Feather and Truckee rivers that will bear his name.

1830 – James Augustine Healy is born to an Irish planter and a slave on a plantation near Macon, Georgia.  He will become the first African American Roman Catholic bishop in America.

1865 – Writing in the “Philadelphia Press” under the pen name “Rollin,” Thomas Morris Chester describes the Union Army’s triumphant entry into the city of Richmond, Virginia, during the closing days of the Civil War.  Rollin is the only African American newspaperman writing for a mainstream daily.   There will be no others for almost 70 years.

1869 – Ebenezer Don Carlos Bassett, the principal of the Institute for Colored Youth in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, is named Minister to Haiti and becomes the first major African American diplomat and the first African American to receive a major appointment from the United States government.

1909 – Matthew Henson, accompanying Commander Robert Peary’s expedition, is the first, in the party of six, to discover the North Pole. The claim, disputed by scientific skeptics, was upheld in 1989 by the Navigation Foundation. Although in later years Henson will be called Peary’s servant or merely “one Negro” on the expedition, Henson is a valuable colleague and co-discoverer of the pole.  Peary says, “I couldn’t get along without him.”

1917 – America enters World War I. President Wilson, who has just inaugurated a policy of segregation in government agencies, tells Congress that “the world must be made safe for democracy.”

1931 – The first trial of the Scottsboro Boys begins in Scottsboro, Alabama.  This trial of nine African American youths accused of raping two white women on a freight train become a cause celebre.

1931 – Ivan Dixon is born in New York City.  He will become an actor and director and will be best known for his comedic role on the TV series “Hogan’s Heroes.”  One of his first acting credits will be for the celebrated television anthology show “The Dupont Show of the Month” in the 1960 production of “Arrowsmith.” He will go on to act in the film version of the theatrical drama “A Raisin in the Sun” with Ruby Dee and Sidney Poitier in 1961, in which he plays Asagai, the African boyfriend of Beneatha. He will also portray Jim in the 1959 film version of “Porgy and Bess.” His other pre-“Hogan’s Heroes” film work includes: “Something of Value” (1957), “The Murder Men” (1961), and “The Battle at Bloody Beach” (1961).   After leaving Hogan’s heroes he will appear in more films including “A Patch of Blue” and “Car Wash.”  Ivan will begin directing films in the early 1970s, such as the 1972 gang warfare flick “Trouble Man” and the 1973 action movie “The Spook Who Sat by the Door” (which he will also produce). For television, he will direct “Love Is Not Enough” (1978), the series “Palmerstown, U.S.A.” (1980), the detective series “Hawaiian Heat” (1984), and the telemovie “Percy & Thunder” (1993).

1937 – William December is born in the village of Harlem in New York City.  He will become one of the most romantic leading men of film and television, better known as ‘Billy Dee Williams.’  Among his best known roles will be football great Gale Sayers in the TV movie “Brian’s Song” as well as leading parts in the movies “Lady Sings the Blues,” “Mahogany” and two “Star Wars” films.

1971 – “Contemporary Black Artists in America” opens at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City.  The exhibit includes the work of 58 master painters and sculptors such as Jacob Lawrence, Charles White, Alma Thomas, Betye Saar, David Driskell, Richard Hunt, and others.

1994 – The presidents of Rwanda and Burundi are killed in a mysterious plane crash near Rwanda’s capital.  Widespread violence erupts in Rwanda over claims the plane had been shot down.

07 April 1712 – 1994

1712 – A slave uprising in New York City results in the death of nine whites.  This is one of the first major revolt of African slaves in the American colonies.  After the militia arrives, the uprising will be suppressed.  As a result of the action, twenty one slaves will be executed and six others will commit suicide.

1867 – Johnson C. Smith University is founded in Charlotte, North Carolina.

1872 – William Monroe Trotter is born in Chillicothe, Ohio.  Editor of the Boston “Guardian,” he will also be a militant civil rights activist and adversary of Booker T. Washington and his moderate politics.

1915 – Eleanor Fagan is born in East Baltimore, Maryland.  She will become a jazz singer who will influence the course of American popular singing, better known as Billie Holiday or “Lady Day.” She will be best known for her songs, “Strange Fruit,” “Lover Man,” and “God Bless the Child.” Although she will enjoy limited popular appeal during her lifetime, her impact on other singers will be profound. Troubled in life by addiction, Holiday will join the ancestors as a result of drug and alcohol abuse in 1959.

1934 – William Monroe Trotter joins the ancestors in Boston, Massachusetts at the age of sixty-two.

1938 – Trumpeter Frederick Dewayne Hubbard is born in Indianapolis, Indiana.  From a musical family, Hubbard will play four instruments in his youth and will later play with “Slide” Hampton, Quincy Jones, and Art Blakey.  A leader of his own band since the 1960’s, he will record the noteworthy albums “Red Clay,” “First Light,” and the Grammy Award-winning “Straight Life.”

1940 – The first U.S. stamp ever to honor an African American is issued bearing the likeness of Booker T. Washington. His likeness is on a 10-cent stamp.

1954 – Tony Dorsett is born in Rochester, Pennsylvania.  He will become a star football player at the University of Pittsburgh, where he will win the Heisman Trophy in 1976.  He will then become the number one pick in the 1977 NFL draft by the Dallas Cowboys.  He will play in two Super Bowls, five NFC championship games, four Pro Bowls, will be All-NFL in 1981, and NFC rushing champion in 1982.  His career totals include 12,739 yards rushing, 398 receptions for 3,544 yards, 16,326 combined net yards, 90 touchdowns, and a record 99 yard run for a touchdown against the Minnesota Vikings in 1983.  He will end his career with the 1988 Denver Broncos.  He will be enshrined in the NFL Hall of Fame in 1994.

1994 – Civil war erupts in Rwanda, a day after a mysterious plane crash claims the lives of the presidents of Rwanda and Burundi. In the months that follow, hundreds of thousands of minority Tutsi and Hutu intellectuals will be slaughtered.

08 April 1922 – 1992

1922 – Carmen McRae is born in the village of Harlem in New York City.  She will study classical piano in her youth, even though singing was her first love. She will win an amateur contest at the Apollo Theater and begin her singing career.  She will be influenced by Billie Holiday, who will become a lifelong friend and mentor. She will devote her albums and the majority of her nightclub acts to Lady Day’s memory. Her association with jazz accordionist Matt Mathews will lead to her first solo recordings in 1953-1954. In her later years, McRae’s original style will influence singers Betty Carter and Carol Sloane.  Her best known recordings will be “Skyliner” (1956) and “Take Five” with Dave Brubeck (1961). She will also work in films and will appear in “Hotel” (1967) and “Jo Jo Dancer Your Life is Calling” (1986).   She will receive six Grammy award nominations and the National Endowment for the Arts’ National Jazz Masters Fellowship Award in 1994. She will join the ancestors in 1994.

1938 – Cornetist and bandleader Joe “King” Oliver joins the ancestors in Savannah, Georgia.  He was considered one of the leading musicians of New Orleans-style jazz and served as a mentor to Louis Armstrong, who played with him in 1922 and 1923.

1974 – Hank Aaron of the Atlanta Braves hits his 715th home run against a pitch thrown by Los Angeles Dodger Al Downing at a home game in Fulton County Stadium. Aaron’s home run breaks the long-standing home run record of Babe Ruth.

1975 – Frank Robinson, major league baseball’s first African American manager, gets off to a winning start as his team, the Cleveland Indians, defeat the New York Yankees, 5-3.

1980 – State troopers are mobilized to stop racially motivated civil disturbances in Wrightsville, Georgia.   Racial incidents are also reported in Chattanooga, Tennessee, Oceanside, California, Kokomo, Indiana, Wichita, Kansas, and Johnston County, North Carolina.

1987 – Los Angeles Dodgers general manager Al Campanis is fired for alleged racially biased comments about the managerial potential of African Americans.

1990 – Percy Julian, who helped create drugs to combat glaucoma and methods to mass produce cortisone, and agricultural scientist George Washington Carver are the first African American inventors admitted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in the hall’s 17-year history.

1992 – Tennis great Arthur Ashe announces at a New York news conference that he had AIDS.  He contracted the virus from a transfusion needed for an earlier heart surgery.  Ashe will join the ancestors in February 1993 of AIDS-related pneumonia at age 49.

09 April 1816 – 1993

1816 – The African Methodist Episcopal Church is organized at a general convention in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

1865 – Nine African American regiments of Gen. John Hawkins’s division help to smash the Confederate defenses at Fort Blakely, Alabama.  Capture of the fort will lead to the fall of Mobile. The 68th U.S. Colored Troops will have the highest number of casualties in the engagement.

1865 – Robert E. Lee surrenders Army of Northern Virginia to Grant at Appomattox Court House, Virginia, ending the Civil War.

AFRICAN AMERICANS IN THE CONFEDERACY: The Confederacy is the    first to recognize that African Americans are major factors in the war. The South impresses slaves to work in mines, repair railroads and build fortifications, thereby releasing a disproportionately large percentage of able-bodied whites for  direct war service.  A handful of African Americans enlisted in the rebel army, but few, if any, fired guns in anger. A regiment of fourteen hundred free African Americans received official recognition in New Orleans, but was not called into service. It later became, by a strange mutation of history, the first African American regiment officially recognized by the Union army.

AFRICAN AMERICANS IN THE UNION NAVY: One out of every four Union sailors was an African American. Of the 118,044 sailors in the Union Navy, 29,511 were African Americans.   At least four African American sailors won Congressional Medals of Honor.

AFRICAN AMERICANS IN THE UNION ARMY: The 185,000 Black soldiers in the Union army were organized into 166 all Black regiments (145 infantry, 7 cavalry, 12 heavy artillery, 1 light artillery, 1 engineer). The largest number of African American soldiers came from Louisiana (24,052), followed by Kentucky (23,703) and Tennessee (20,133).  Pennsylvania contributed more African American soldiers than any other Northern state (8,612). African American soldiers participated in 449 battles, 39 of them major engagements.  Sixteen Black soldiers received Congressional Medals of Honor for gallantry in action.   Some 37,638 African American soldiers lost their lives during the war. African American soldiers generally received poor equipment and were forced to do a large amount of fatigue duty.   Until 1864, African American soldiers (from private to chaplain) received seven dollars a month whereas white soldiers received from thirteen to one hundred dollars a month. In 1863 African American units, with four exceptions (Fifth Massachusetts Cavalry, Fifty-fourth and Fifty-fifth Massachusetts Volunteers and Twenty-ninth Connecticut Volunteers), were officially designated United States Colored Troops (USCT). Since the War Department discouraged applications from African Americans, there were few commissioned officers. The highest ranking of the seventy-five to one hundred African American officers was Lt. Col. Alexander T. Augustana, a surgeon.  Some 200,000 African American civilians were employed by the Union army as laborers, cooks, teamster and servants.

1866 – The Civil Rights Bill of 1866 is passed over the president’s veto. The bill will confer citizenship on African Americans and give them “the same right, in every State and Territory… as is enjoyed by white citizens.”

1870 – The American Anti-Slavery Society is dissolved.

1898 – Paul Leroy Robeson is born in Princeton, New Jersey. The son of an ex-slave turned Methodist minister, Robeson will attend Rutgers University on a full scholarship, where he will excel in four sports, be a member of the debate team, and earn a Phi Beta Kappa key.  An attorney, he will later become one of America’s foremost actors and singers.  He will make 14 films including “The Emperor Jones,” “King Solomon’s Mines,” and “Showboat.”  An advocate of African American equality, his public support of Communism will cause the cancellation of concert dates and the revocation of his passport.

1929 – Valenza Pauline Burke is born in Brooklyn, New York to parents who had immigrated to the United States from Barbados.  She will become a novelist known as Paule Marshall.   She will author “Browngirl, Brownstones,” “Praisesong for the Widow,” “The Chosen Place, The Timeless People,” “Soul Clap Hands and Sing,” and Daughters.” She will also write a collection of short stories, “Reena and Other Stories.”

1939 – When she is refused admission to the Daughters of the American Revolution’s Constitution Hall to give a planned concert, Marian Anderson performs for 75,000 on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.  Two months later, she will be honored with the NAACP’s Spingarn Medal for her talents as “one of the greatest singers of our time” and for “her magnificent dignity as a human being.”

1950 – Juanita Hall becomes the first African American to win a Tony award for her role as Bloody Mary in the musical “South Pacific.”

1968 – Martin Luther King Jr. is buried, after funeral services at Ebenezer Baptist Church and memorial services at Morehouse College, in Atlanta, Georgia.  More than 300,000 persons march behind the coffin of the slain leader which is carried through the streets of Atlanta on a farm wagon pulled by two Georgia mules. Scores of national dignitaries, including Vice-President Hubert Humphrey, attend the funeral. CORE and the Fellowship of Reconciliation send twenty-three dignitaries.   Ralph David Abernathy is elected to succeed King as head of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

1993 – The Reverend Benjamin Chavis is chosen to head the NAACP, succeeding Benjamin Hooks.

10 April 1816 – 1975

1816 – Richard Allen is elected Bishop of the A.M.E. Church, one day after the church is organized at its first general convention.

1872 – The first National Black Convention meets in New Orleans, Louisiana.  Frederick Douglass will be elected president.

1877 – Federal troops withdraw from Columbia, South Carolina.  This action will allow the white South Carolina Democrats to take over the state government.

1926 – Johnnie Tillmon (later Blackston) is born in Scott, Arkansas. A welfare rights champion, Tillmon will become the founding chairperson and director of the National Welfare Rights Organization.

1932 – The James Weldon Johnson Literary Guild announces the winners of its first annual nationwide poetry contest for children. The judges – Jessie Fauset and Countee Cullen, among others – select in the teen category a 16-year-old Liberian youth and Margaret Walker of New Orleans, who receives an honorable mention for her poem “When Night Comes.”

1938 – Nana Annor Adjaye, Pan-Africanist, joins the ancestors in W. Nzima, Ghana.

1943 – Arthur Robert Ashe, Jr. is born in Richmond, Virginia.  He will become a professional tennis player and will be one of the first African American male tennis stars. He will be the first African American to win a spot on the American Davis Cup tennis team, the first to win the U.S. Open and the men’s singles title at Wimbledon, in 1975.  Over his 11-year career he will play in 304 tournaments, winning 51, including the 1970 Australian Open and Wimbledon in 1975. He will be the number one ranked player in the world in 1975.  A life-threatening heart condition will force him to retire in 1980 and he will continue to serve as the non-playing captain of that year’s U.S. Davis Cup team. In 1985 he will become the second African American inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame. The first was Althea Gibson in 1971. After his career in tennis, he will become an eloquent spokesperson against racial intolerance and a critic of South Africa’s racist system of apartheid.  In the United States, he will create tennis programs to benefit inner-city youth. He will write a three-volume history of the African American athlete entitled “A Hard Road To Glory” (1988).  Suffering complications from AIDS, contracted from a blood transfusion during a heart bypass operation, he will join the ancestors in New York on February 6, 1993.

1958 – W.C. Handy, composer and musician, joins the ancestors at the age of 84 in New York City.

1959 – Kenneth Edmonds is born in Indianapolis, Indiana.  He will become a professional musician and will begin work in the business producing music, with his friend Antonio Reid, for Carrie Lucas, the Whispers, and Dynasty. Since then, they’ve produced hits for many others.  During the 1990s, his dominance will extend beyond the production arena and into the performing circle. His hit “Tender Lover” crossed him over into pop territory and eventually sold more than two million copies. The singles “Whip Appeal” and “It’s No Crime” were Top Ten R&B and pop hits. He will hit his peak in 1995, producing hits for artists like Boyz II Men, Madonna and Whitney Houston and coordinated the “Waiting to Exhale” soundtrack. In the fall of 1996, he will released “Day,” his first solo album since 1993 to strong reviews. He will successfully produce the film “Soul Food” in 1997.

1968 – U.S. Congress passes a Civil Rights Bill banning racial discrimination in the sale or rental of approximately 80 per cent of the nation’s housing.  The bill also made it a crime to interfere with civil rights workers and to cross state lines to incite a riot.

1975 – Lee Elder becomes the first African American to tee off as an entrant in the Masters’ Tournament in Augusta, Georgia.

11 April 1865 – 1997

1865 – President Lincoln recommends suffrage for African American veterans and African Americans who are “very intelligent.”

1881 – Spelman College is founded with $100 and eleven former slaves determined to learn to read and write. It is opened as the Atlanta Baptist Female Seminary. The two female founders, Sophia B. Packard and Harriet E. Giles are appalled by the lack of educational opportunities for African American women at the time.  They will return to Boston determined to get support to change that and earned what will prove to be the lifelong support of John D. Rockefeller, who considers Spelman to be one of his family’s finest investments.  The name Spelman is adopted later in honor of Mrs. Rockefeller’s parents.

1933 – Tony Brown is born in Charleston, West Virginia. He will become well known as executive producer, host, and moderator of the Emmy-winning television series “Black Journal.” In 1971 he will establish and become the first dean of Howard University’s School of Communications, a post he will hold until 1974.

1955 – Roy Wilkins is elected the NAACP’s executive secretary following the ancestral ascension of Walter White.

1956 – Singer Nat “King” Cole is attacked on the stage of a Birmingham theater by white supremacists.

1966 – Emmett Ashford becomes the first African American major league umpire, working in the American League.  He had been the first African American professional umpire in the minor leagues in 1951.

1967 – Harlem voters defy Congress and re-elect Congressman Adam Clayton Powell Jr. after he had been expelled by the legislative body.

1968 – President Lyndon B. Johnson signs what will become known as the 1968 Housing Act, which outlaws discrimination in the sale, rental, or leasing of 80% of the housing in the United States.  Passed by the Senate and submitted by the House to Johnson in the aftermath of the King assassination, the bill also protects civil rights workers and makes it a federal crime to cross state lines for the purpose of inciting a riot.

1972 – Benjamin L. Hooks, a Memphis lawyer and Baptist minister, becomes the first African American to be named to the Federal Communications Commission.

1979 – Idi Amin is deposed as president of Uganda. A combined force of Tanzanian and Ugandan soldiers overthrew the dictator.  Amin, who attained power in 1971 after a coup against socialist-leaning President Milton Obote, oversaw the killing of at least 100,000 people. It is believed that Idi Amin left Uganda to live in Saudi Arabia.

1988 – Willie D. Burton becomes the first African American to win the Oscar for sound when he receives the award for the movie “Bird.”

1997 – The Museum of African American History opens in Detroit. It will become the largest of its kind in the world.

12 April

“The information for 12 April will be posted at a later date“

13 April 1723 – 1997

1723 – The governor of Massachusetts issues a proclamation on the “fires which have been designedly and industriously kindled by some villainous and desperate Negroes or other dissolute people as appears by the confession of some of them.”

1873 – The Colfax Massacre occurs on Easter Sunday morning, in Grant Parish, Louisiana.  More than sixty African Americans are killed.

1891 – Nellie Walker is born in Chicago, Illinois to an African American father and Danish mother.  She will become a  writer known as Nella Larsen and one of the most celebrated novelists of the Harlem Renaissance.  She will receive many awards for her writings, including the Harmon Foundation’s bronze medal for literature in 1929, and the Guggenheim Fellowship in 1930.   When she receives the Guggenheim award, she becomes the first African American woman recipient. She will best known for her novels, “Quicksand” and “Passing.” She will join the ancestors in 1964.

1906 – Riots occur in Brownsville, Texas, when African American soldiers retaliate against white citizens for racial slurs.

1907 – Harlem Hospital opens in New York with 150 beds. It will become one of the early leading African American hospitals.

1946 – Al Green is born in Forrest City, Arkansas.  He will become one of the most popular soul and pop singers of the 1970’s, known for his recordings “Tired of Being Alone,” “Let’s Stay Together,” “Here I Am (Come and Take Me)” and “I’m Still in Love with You.” Green will later become a minister and return to performing as a gospel singer, where he will win numerous Grammy awards.

1963 – Sidney Poitier receives an Oscar for best actor for his performance in “Lilies of the Field.” He is the first African American male to receive the Academy Award.   He will later become a director and make 1980’s “Stir Crazy,” the largest-grossing movie by an African American director ever.

1997 – Eldrick “Tiger” Woods wins the 61st Masters Tournament in Augusta, Georgia at the age of 21 becoming the youngest person and first person of African descent to ever win this tournament.

14 April 1775 – 1991

1775 – The first U.S. abolitionist society, the Pennsylvania Society for the Abolition of Slavery, is formed in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, by Quakers.  Benjamin Franklin serves as its first president.

1868 – South Carolina voters approve a new constitution, 70,758 to 27,228, and elect state officers, including the first African American cabinet officer, Francis L. Cardozo, secretary of state.  The new constitution requires integrated education and contains a strong bill of rights section: “Distinctions on account of race or color, in any case whatever, shall be prohibited, and all classes of citizens shall enjoy equally all common, public, legal and political privileges.”

1873 – The U.S. Supreme Court decision in Slaughterhouse cases begins process of diluting the Fourteenth Amendment. The court says the Fourteenth Amendment protects federal civil rights, not “civil rights heretofore belonging exclusively to the states.”

1906 – The Azusa Street Revival — proto-mission out of which the modern Pentecostal movement will spread worldwide — officially begins when the services led by African American evangelist William J. Seymour, 36, moves into the building at 312 Azusa Street in Los Angeles, California.

1915 – James Hutton Brew, “Pioneer of West African Journalism,” joins the ancestors.

1943 – Howardena Pindell is born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She will become an accomplished artist. A student at Boston and Yale universities, she will receive several art fellowships and travel the world to create art that reflects a clear artistic vision and an intense commitment to issues of racial and social injustice.

1969 – The student Afro-American Society seizes the Columbia College admissions office and demands a special  admissions board and staff.

1991 – A major retrospective of the late Romare Bearden’s career and work opens at the Studio Museum of Harlem.  Entitled Memory and Metaphor: The Art of Romare Bearden 1940-1987, the exhibit includes 140 oil and watercolor paintings as well as numerous collages that chronicle his exploration of abstract expressionism, social realism, and reinterpretation of classical themes in art and literature.

15 April 1861 – 1985

1861 – President Lincoln calls for 75,000 troops to put down the rebellion. The Lincoln administration rejects African American volunteers. For almost two years straight African Americans fight for the right, as one humorist puts it, “to be kilt”.

1889 – Asa Philip Randolph is born in Crescent Way, Florida.  He will become a labor leader, the organizer of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters in 1925, and a tireless fighter for civil rights.  He will join the ancestors in 1979.

1919 – Elizabeth Catlett is born in Washington, DC.  She will become an internationally known printmaker and sculptor who will emigrate to Mexico and embrace both African and Mexican influences in her art.

1922 – Harold Washington is born in Chicago, Illinois.  He will serve in the Illinois House of Representatives and Senate as well as two terms in Congress before becoming the first African American mayor of Chicago.  He will join the ancestors after suffering a massive heart attack on November 25, 1987 after being re-elected to a second term as mayor.

1928 – Pioneering architect Norma Merrick (later Sklarek) is born in New York City.  Sklarek will be the first licensed woman architect in the United States and the first African American woman to become a fellow in the American Institute of Architects (1980).

1947 – Baseball player Jackie Robinson plays his first major-league baseball game (he had played exhibition games previously) for the Brooklyn Dodgers, becoming the first African American in the major leagues Moses Fleetwood Walker had played in 1885. The Brooklyn Dodgers promoted him to the majors from the Montreal Royals.

1957 – Evelyn Ashford is born in Shreveport, Louisiana. She will grow up in Roseville, California becoming a track star specializing in sprinting.  She will be a four-time winner of Olympic gold medals and one silver in 1976, 1984, 1988, and 1992. In 1979, she will set a world record in the 200-meter dash. In 1989 she will receive the Flo Hyman Award from the Woman’s Sports Foundation.  In 1992, the U.S. Olympic team will ask her to carry the flag during the opening ceremonies in the Barcelona Olympics. She will retire from track and field in 1993 at the age of 36.

1958 – African Freedom Day is declared at the All-African People’s Conference in Accra, Ghana.

1960 – The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) is formed on the campus of Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina.

1985 – Thomas “Hit Man” Hearns wins the World Middleweight title.  This is one of five weight classes that he will win a  boxing title making him the first African American to win boxing titles in five different weight classes.