In 1963, Martin Luther King Jr gives his "I Have A Dream" speech at the Lincoln Memorial.
http://experiencinghistory.blogspot.com/2011/08/i-have-dream.html
On August 20 in Black History...
In 1989 - The first National Black Theater Festival closes in Winston-Salem, N.C.
In 1964 - President Johnson signed Economic Opportunity Act
In 1944, Spingarn Medal presented to Charles R. Drew "who set up and ran the blood plasma bank in the Presbyterian Hospital in New York City which served as one of the models for the widespread system of blood banks now in operation for the American Red Cross."
In 1941, William Herbert Gray, III (Bill Gray) was born on this day.
In 1939, The National Negro Bowling Association was organized in Detroit, Michigan and Wynston Brown became its first president.
In 1856 - Wilberforce University was established in Ohio.
In 1831, Nat Turner, a brilliant minister and moody slave, led the first slave revolt of magnitude. The revolt was crushed, but only after Turner and his band had killed some sixty whites and threw the South into panic. After hiding out, Turner was captured on October 30...
In 1830 - First National Negro Convention took place in Philadelphia, chaired by Richard.
In 1619 -Twenty Africans arrived in Jamestown, Virginia, aboard a Dutch ship. They are the first blacks to be forcibly settled as involuntary laborers in the North American British Colonies.
On August 19 in Black History...
1989 - Desmond Tutu defied apartheid laws by walking alone on a South African beach.
In 1958, youth from the NAACP Council begins sit-ins at lunch counters in Oklahoma City. The Dockum Drug Store sit-in was one of the first organized lunch-counter sit-ins for the purpose of integrating segregated establishments in the United States. The protest began in July 1958 in Wichita, Kansas at the Dockum Drug Store, a store in the old Rexall chain, in which protesters would sit at the counter all day until the store closed, ignoring taunts from counter protesters. The sit-in ended three weeks later when the owner relented and agreed to serve black patrons.
Twenty-year-old Ron Walters, president of the local NAACP Youth Council, organized the Wichita protest together with his cousin Carol Parks-Hahn. Wichita was heavily segregated in the late 1950s, with schools segregated up to high school and blacks excluded from public accommodations. While working at a job in downtown Wichita, Walters went for lunch to a Woolworth's store, which would only serve blacks bagged lunches sold from one end of the lunch counter. Seeking to find a way to protest against the practice, Walters and his cousin Carol Parks-Hahn met with attorney Frank Williams, who described a sit-in by students at a California college who ended segregation at a campus restaurant by occupying it with students reading newspapers all day long. The protest was inspired by the actions of the Little Rock Nine and the earlier Montgomery Bus Boycott. The plan they developed targeted Dockum, a downtown store that was part of the national Rexall chain, which had a lunch counter that only served white customers, starting on July 19, 1958, with ten well-dressed and polite students seeking to place orders while sitting at the lunch counter. Parks-Haun ordered a Coca-Cola from a waitress, who served it to her but then pulled it back when she realized that "store policy was not to serve colored people". Students sat quietly all day at the counters, enduring taunts and threats from white customers. After three weeks, in early August, the manager came in and said "Serve them — I'm losing too much money". Historian Gretchen Eick called the Dockum Drug Store sit-in as setting "a precedent that really began what would be a very significant strategy — a strategy that would change the way business was done in the United States". Ultimately, all of the Dockum locations in Kansas were desegregated.
Though the Dockum sit-in had attracted little media attention, on August 19, 1958 in Oklahoma City a nationally recognized sit-in at the Katz Drug Store lunch counter occurred. The protest there was led by NAACP Youth Council leader Clara Luper, a local high school teacher, together with young local students, including Luper's eight-year old daughter, who had suggested the sit-in be held. The group quickly desegregated the Katz Drug Store lunch counters. Following the Oklahoma City sit-ins, the tactic of non-violent student sit-ins spread. The widely publicized Greensboro sit-ins began more than a year later at a Woolworth's in Greensboro, North Carolina, starting on February 1, 1960, launching a wave of anti-segregation sit-ins across the South and opened a national awareness of the depth of segregation in the nation.
A 20-foot-long bronze sculpture first announced in 1998 at a cost of $3 million marks the site of the successful sit-in, with a lunch counter and patrons depicting the protest.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dockum_Drug_Store_sit-in
http://www.thehistorymakers.com/biography/biography.asp?bioindex=627&category=educationMakers
In 1791 - Benjamin Banneker writes letter to then secretary of state Thomas Jefferson. The letter showed the hypocrisy of slavery. After departing the federal capital area, Banneker wrote a letter to Thomas Jefferson, who in 1776 had drafted the United States Declaration of Independence and in 1791 was serving as the United States Secretary of State. Quoting language in the Declaration, the letter expressed a plea for justice for African Americans. To further support this plea, Banneker included within the letter a handwritten manuscript of an almanac for 1792 containing his ephemeris with his astronomical calculations. In the letter, Banneker accused Jefferson of criminally using fraud and violence to oppress his slaves by stating:
“…Sir, how pitiable is it to reflect, that although you were so fully convinced of the benevolence of the Father of Mankind, and of his equal and impartial distribution of these rights and privileges, which he hath conferred upon them, that you should at the same time counteract his mercies, in detaining by fraud and violence so numerous a part of my brethren, under groaning captivity and cruel oppression, that you should at the same time be found guilty of that most criminal act, which you professedly detested in others, with respect to yourselves.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Banneker#Letter_to_Thomas_Jefferson_on_racism
On August 18 in Black History...
In 1963, James Meredith, the first Black person admitted to the University of Mississippi, graduates from University of Mississippi, 1963. James H. Meredith (born June 25, 1933) is an American civil rights movement figure. He was the first African American student at the University of Mississippi, an event that was a flashpoint in the American civil rights movement. Motivated by the broadcast of President John F. Kennedy's inaugural address (which did not mention civil rights per se). Meredith decided to exercise his democratic rights and apply to the University of Mississippi. Meredith's goal was to put pressure on the Kennedy administration as to the issue. Meredith was married to Mary June Wiggins Meredith, now deceased.They had one daughter, Jessica Meredith Knight, and three sons: James, John and Joseph Howard Meredith. In 1989, the junior James Meredith (then 20) was sentenced to one year's house arrest for his role in a 1987 car crash in which two of his co-workers were killed and he suffered serious injuries. In 2002, Joseph Meredith graduated from the University of Mississippi as the most outstanding doctoral student in the School of Business Administration. Joseph had previously earned degrees from Harvard University and Millsaps College. James Meredith said of the occasion,
"I think there's no better proof that White supremacy was wrong than not only to have my son graduate, but to graduate as the most outstanding graduate of the school...That, I think, vindicates my whole life." Joseph Meredith died in 2008 at age 39 of complications from lupus. At the time of his death, he was an assistant professor of finance at Texas A&M International University. He left behind a daughter, Jasmine Victoria. James Meredith currently lives in Jackson, Mississippi with his second wife, Judy Alsobrook Meredith. Meredith wrote a memoir of his days at the University of Mississippi entitled Three Years in Mississippi, published by the
Indiana University Press in 1966, and also
self-published several books.
On August 14 in Black History...
In 1883, Biologist and pioneer of cell division, Ernest E. Just was born. Just was a pioneering African American biologist, academic and science writer. Just's primary legacy is his recognition of the fundamental role of the cell surface in the development of organisms. In his work within marine biology, cytology and parthenogenesis, he advocated the study of whole cells under normal conditions, rather than simply breaking them apart in a laboratory setting. Ernest also assisted three Howard students (Edgar Amos Love, Oscar James Cooper, and Frank Coleman), in establishing Omega Psi Phi Fraternity, Inc. Just was the subject of the 1983 biography
Black Apollo of Science: The Life of Ernest Everett Just by Kenneth R. Manning. The book received the 1983
Pfizer Award and was a finalist for the 1984 Pulitzer Prizefor Biography or Autobiography
In 1968, Halle Berry was born. Berry is an American actress, former fashion model, and beauty queen. Berry received an Emmy, Golden Globe, SAG, and an NAACP Image Award for Introducing Dorothy Dandridge and won an Academy Award for Best Actress and was nominated for a BAFTA Award in 2001 for her performance in Monster's Ball, becoming the first and, as of 2011, only woman of African American descent to have won the award for Best Actress. She is one of the most highly paid actresses in Hollywood and also a Revlon spokeswoman. She has been involved in the production side of several of the films in which she performed. Before becoming an actress, Berry entered several beauty contests, finishing as the 1st runner-up in the Miss USA Pageant (1986), and coming in 6th place in the Miss World Pageant in 1986. She made her film debut with a small role in 1991's Jungle Fever. This led to starring roles in The Flintstones (1994), Bulworth (1998), X-Men (2000) and its sequels, and as Bond Girl Jinx in Die Another Day (2002). She also won the Golden Raspberry Award for Worst Actress in 2005 for Catwoman and accepted the award in person—one of the few performers to do so.
In 1959, Ervin "Magic" Johnson was born. Johnson Jr. is a retired American professional basketball player who played point guard for the Los Angeles Lakers of the National Basketball Association (NBA). After winning championships in high school and college, Johnson was selected first overall in the 1979 NBA Draft by the Lakers. He won a championship and an NBA Finals Most Valuable Player Award in his rookie season, and won four more championships with the Lakers during the 1980s. Johnson retired abruptly in 1991 after announcing that he had contracted HIV, but returned to play in the 1992 All-Star Game, winning the All-Star MVP Award. After protests from his fellow players, he retired again for four years, but returned in 1996, at age 37, to play 32 games for the Lakers before retiring for the third and final time.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_Johnson
In 1914, Dr. Herman Branson, physicist and chemist, was born in Pocohantas, Virginia. Branson was an African-American physicist, best known for his research on the alpha helix protein structure, and was also the president of two colleges.
