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1777
Massachusetts slaves petition the legislature for their
freedom.
1808
Salmon Portland Chase was born on this date. He was an
American teacher, abolitionist, lawyer and Judge.
From New Hampshire, his father died when he
was 9 years old and his uncle, Philander Chase a Bishop in Ohio raised him. Young Chase graduated from Dartmouth College
in 1826, working briefly as a schoolteacher in Washington. In 1830 he moved to Cincinnati and
established himself as a lawyer. It was in the Queen City
that he became a member of the Anti-Slavery Society. Chase defended so many
re-captured slaves and became known as the “attorney general for runaway
Negroes.”
He also gave free legal advice for those caught working for the Underground
Railroad. Chase was affiliated with Whig and the Liberty Party but in 1848, he
and others joined to form the Free-Soil Party. The following year Chase was
elected to the United States Senate and played an important role in the
campaign against the Kansas-Nebraska Act. In 1855 he was elected as the
governor of Ohio.
He sought the Republican Party presidential nomination in 1860 but on the third
ballot asked his supporters to vote for Abraham Lincoln. As president, Lincoln appointed Chase
as Secretary of the Treasury. He helped to establish a national banking system
and began the employment of women clerks. Chase was the most progressive member
of Lincoln’s
Cabinet.
In 1862, Chase and Abraham Lincoln fought over the treatment of General David
Hunter. Hunter was enlisting Black soldiers in the occupied districts of South Carolina and had
issued a statement that all slaves owned by Confederates in those areas were
free. Lincoln was furious and instructed him to
break up the 1st South
Carolina (African Descent) regiment and withdraw his
public statement.
Chase’ main dispute with Lincoln
was that the president refused to state that emancipation of the slaves was an
object of the war. In Cabinet meetings Chase was the only member to argue for
Black suffrage, he resigned 1864. That same year Lincoln appointed him as Chief Justice of the
Supreme Court. On the Bench, Chase was highly critical of Lincoln’s Reconstruction Plans and even more
of Andrew Johnson’s whose Senate impeachment proceedings he presided over.
As Chief Justice, Chase interpreted the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments to
the Constitution to help protect the rights of Blacks from infringement by
state action. Salmon Chase died on May 7th 1873.
1850
This date marks the birth of Charlotte E. Ray. She was a Black teacher and the
first Black female lawyer in the United States.
Born in New York City,
her father was a journalist, Congregational minister antislavery activist, and
conductor on the Underground Railroad. Ray studied at the Institution for the
Education of Colored Youth in Washington, D.C., and by 1869 she was teaching at Howard University.
There she studied law and received her degree in 1872. Her admission that year
to the District of Columbia bar made her the
first woman admitted to practice in the District of
Columbia and the first Black woman certified as a lawyer in the United States.
Ray opened a law office in Washington,
D.C., but racial prejudices
proved too strong, and she could not obtain enough legal business to maintain
an active practice. By 1879 she had returned to New York City, where she taught in the public
schools. In the late 1880s she married a man with the surname of Fraim.
Little is known of her later life, she died January 4, 1911 in Woodside, N.Y.
1869
The first Black
labor convention, the Convention of the
Colored National Labor Union, was held in Union
League Hall in Washington, D.C. Fredrick Douglass was elected president.
1873
Pinckney Benton Stewart (P.B.S.)
Pinchback, the first African
American to become governor of a U.S. state, relinquishes the office of governor,
saying at the inauguration of the new Louisiana governor: “I now have the honor
to formally surrender the office of governor, with the hope that you will
administer the government in the interests of all the people [and that] your administration will be as fair toward the class that I
represent, as mine has been toward the class represented by you.” Pinchback, a Republican, served as the governor of Louisiana for
thirty-five days: from December 9, 1872, to January 13, 1873.
1905
On this date
we celebrate the birth of Ivie Anderson. She was an
African-American singer.
From Gilroy,
California Ivie Marie Anderson was orphaned as a child and was subsequently
raised in convents. Ivie began to study voice at a young age. From the age of
nine to fifteen she sang in her school’s glee club and choral society. Later,
she joined Harlem’s Cotton Club as a chorus
girl and sang for a time with Earl Hines. In 1931, Duke Ellington hired her as
his first featured singer; she was one of the first female singers to be
spotlighted with a band.
Her recorded debut with Ellington was the 1932 hit, It Don’t Mean a Thing
(If It Ain’t Got That Swing). Anderson remained with Ellington longer than any other singer and has the status as his most distinguished vocalist. Extremely beautiful, she was vivacious and sang with a sensitive relaxed rhythm, a smoky tone, near perfect pitch and diction that showed a rare respect for lyrics. Ivie Anderson had a special rapport with her audiences.
She also developed a unique relationship with drummer Sonny Greer; onstage, he
would “talk” to her with his drums and she would sing back her answer. Her
foremost recordings were Stormy Weather, I’m Satisfied, and Raising
the Rent, all in 1933, I Got It Bad And That Ain’t Good (1941), and
many more. Ivie Anderson retired due to serious asthma problems and died in Los Angeles on September
28, 1949.
1912
On this
date, Horace Rains was born.
He was an African-American Doctor and activist.
From Atlanta, Georgia he was one of three sons
born to Igolias and Elizabeth Rains. The family moved to Columbus, Ohio
when young Horace was a baby. It was in Columbus
where he attended and completed his education in public schools. Rains attended
Wilberforce University on a Track scholarship and
received his B.S. degree in 1938. He then taught Physical Education at Lincoln University,
Jefferson City Missouri before being drafted into the Army
in 1941.
After serving in Europe and the Southwest Pacific during World War II he
enrolled at Meharry
Medical College
in 1949. Rains married Francis McHie, (with whom he eventually had two
children). In 1953, he received his M.D. degree beginning an internship at Los Angeles County General
Hospital and UCLA. In
1954 entered private Medical and Family Practice in Long Beach, California.
It was during these years that as the second Black family in their southern California neighborhood,
they experienced constant racism for years.
Vandalism to their property to the point of having to arm himself, he and his
wife decided to stay and fight for their rights. Prior to his own business as a
physician, Rains was the first African American on staff at St. Mary’s Long
Beach Memorial and Long Beach
Community Hospitals.
He was very active during the Civil Rights movement. Rains was President of the
Long Beach NAACP, Chairman of the United Civil Rights Committee and was “Man of
the Year” of the Long Beach American Legion in 1965. In 1988, he retired from
his practice due to health issues.
He became active in many organizations such as: The Wilberforce Alumni
Association, the Belmont Shore Lions Club and the Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity.
Rains was involved with the Long Beach City Planning Commission and the City of
Hope. Horace
Rains M.D. died on June 9, 1998 in Long
Beach, California.
1913
On this
date, Delta Sigma Theta Sorority was
founded. Twenty-two collegiate women at Howard University
created the organization. These students wanted to use their collective
strength to promote academic excellence and to provide assistance to persons in
need. The first public act performed by the Delta Founders involved their
participation in the Women’s Suffrage March in Washington D.C.,
March 1913. Delta Sigma Theta was incorporated in 1929. The sorority has
grown, from the original 22 founders, to over 175,000 members in over 800
chapters in the United States,
West Germany, the Caribbean,
Liberia, and the Republic of South Korea.
1925
Benjamin Hooks was born on this date.
1953
Don Barksdale becomes the first African American
person to play in an NBA All-Star Game.
1966
Dr. Robert Clifton Weaver becomes the first African American
appointed to a presidential cabinet position, when President Lyndon B. Johnson
names him to head the newly created Department of Housing and Urban
Development.
1979
A commemorative stamp of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. is issued by the
U.S. Postal Service as part of its Black Heritage USA commemorative series. The stamp
of the slain civil rights leader is the second in the series.
1979
Singer Donnie Hathaway joins the ancestors after jumping
from the 15th floor of New
York’s Essex House hotel.
1982
Hank Aaron and Frank Robinson are elected to
the Baseball Hall of Fame.
1983
Citing Muhammad Ali’s deteriorating physical condition, the American Medical Association (AMA) calls for the banning of prizefighting because new evidence suggests that
chronic brain damage is prevalent in boxers.
1985
Jerome “Brud” Holland, former President of Hampton
University and former Ambassador of Sweden, died on this date. Dr. Holland was
the first Black to serve on the New York Stock Exchange Board of Directors.
1987
Even Mecham, then governor of Arizona,
rescinded the gubernatorial decree by Gov. Bruce Babbit that established the Rev. Martin
Luther King, Jr. Holiday as a state holiday.
1989
Sterling Allen Brown joins the ancestors in Washington, DC.
He had devoted his life to the development of an authentic black folk
literature. He was one of the first scholars to identify folklore as a vital
component of the black aesthetic and to recognize its validity as a form of
artistic expression. He worked to legitimatize this genre in several ways. As a
critic, he exposed the shortcomings of white literature that stereotyped blacks
and demonstrated why black authors are best suited to describe the Black
experience. As a poet, he mined the rich vein of black Southern culture,
replacing primitive or sentimental caricatures with authentic folk heroes drawn
from Afro-American sources. He was associated
with Howard University for almost sixty years.
1990
Lawrence Douglas Wilder was
inaugurated as the first Black governor in U.S.
history on this day in Virginia.
Ironically, Wilder, the grandson of slaves, took the oath of office in Richmond, Virginia’s
capital and the former capital of the Confederacy. Wilder won the election in Virginia by a mere 7,000
votes in a state once the heart of the Confederacy and had once
denied him admission to its all-White schools. Later in the year, he received
the NAACP's Spingarn Medal for his lifetime achievements. He served from 1990
to 1994. A native of Richmond, Wilder, in 1951, graduated
from Virginia Union University
with a bachelor’s degree in chemistry. He later served in the Army during the
Korean War and received the Bronze Star for heroism and later attended Howard University
where he earned a law degree in 1959. A Democrat, Wilder was elected a state
senator in 1969, becoming the first Black to serve in the Virginia Legislature
since Reconstruction. He was elected lieutenant governor in 1985 making him the
highest ranking Black state official in the nation at that time, serving until
he won the governorship. He currently serves as mayor of Richmond.
1997
WWII veteran Vernon Baker is awarded the Medal of Honor at age 77.
1999
Michael Jeffrey Jordan, considered the best player to ever
play in the NBA, retires from professional basketball after thirteen seasons.
This is the second time ‘His Airness’ has retired. He leaves the game after leading the Chicago
Bulls to six NBA championships and winning five MVP awards. Before rejoining
the NBA with the Washington Wizards, he was 3rd all-time in points
scored, 29,277, and 3rd in steals, 2,306.
2002
Charity Earley, first black commissioned officer in
the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps and commander of the only battalion of black
women who served overseas during WWII, died on this date.
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