Today In Black History

1775*

Black and white Minutemen fought British Soldiers at Lexington and Concord.

1866*

On April 19, 1866, the African American citizens of Washington D.C. celebrated the abolition of slavery. 4,000 to 5,000 people assembled to the White House addressed by Andrew Johnson.

 Led by two black regiments the spectators, and the procession proceeded up the Pennsylvania Avenue to Franklin Square for religious services and speeched by prominent politicians. 

The sign on top of the platform read: "We have received our civil rights. Give us the right of suffrage and the work is done."

1947*

Jackie Robinson becomes the first African American major league baseball player

1960*

Home of Z. Alexander Looby, counsel for 153 students arrested in sit-in demonstrations, destroyed by dynamite bomb. 

More than eighty-three demonstrators indicted in Atlanta, Georgia, on charges stemming from the sit-in demonstrations at Atlanta restaurants. 

Two thousand students marched on the Nashville City Hall in protest. 

One hundred Black students, carrying rifles and shotguns, seized the Student Building at Cornell University to protest University "racism."

1960*

National Education Association study revealed that Blacks had lost thirty thousand teaching jobs since 1954 in seventeen Southern and Border states because of discrimination and desegregation.

1971*

Walter Fauntroy takes office as the first elected Congressional representative from the District of Columbia since Reconstruction.

1977*

Alex Haley receives a special Pulitzer Prize for Roots.

1978*

Max Robinson is the first African American to anchor network news. The network is ABC.

1989*

Republic Day in Sierra Leone.