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Rosa Parks, a
Montgomery , Alabama, seamstress, was
arrested by Montgomery police for refusing
to move to the back of
the bus and give her
seat to a white
passenger. This
incident lead to the
successful boycott of
the Montgomery city
bus system by
African Africans in
1955.
In 1970, the US
Senate voted 70 to 12
to approve a federal
grant that would give
the Taos Pueblo people
title to 48,000 acres
of land in New Mexico.
In 1639, the Bronx
portion of New York
was purchased from
Native Americans.
The purchase was
made by German
immigrant Jonas
Bronck, a farmer, for
whom the region is
currently named.
The Amsterdam
News, the largest
African Americanowned newspaper in
New York City and
the largest weekly
community newspaper
in the United States,
was started in 1909 in
the New York City
home of James H.
Anderson.
In 1992, Mae Jemison
was the first female
astronaut of African
American descent to
go into space. Her
first mission was a
cooperative effort
between the US and
Japan which focused
on experiments in
space to gain more
knowledge about the
life sciences.
The Thirteenth
Amendment to the
Constitution was
ratified in 1865,
ending the institution
of slavery in the
United States by law.
The true end of
slavery came on April
19, 1865, when the
Confederate troops of
the South surrendered to the Union
troops of the North.
The Reverend W.
Sterling Cary, a New
York minister, became
the first African
American to be
elected president of
the National Council
of Churches.
The true end of
slavery came on April
19, 1865, when the
Confederate troops of
the South surrendered to the Union
troops of the North.
John Lennon, former
lead guitarist of The
Beatles, was shot to
death in New York
City outside his
apartment building,
the Dakota, in 1980.
The true end of
slavery came on April
19, 1865, when the
Confederate troops of
the South surrendered to the Union
troops of the North.
Sinclair Lewis was
awarded the 1930
Nobel Prize for
Literature. He was
the first US author to
win the prize in that
category. His body
of work exposed the
weaknesses he saw in
US social life,
expressed in such
books as Main Street
(1920), Babbitt
(1922), and Elmer
Gantry (1927).
Diane Feinstein , a
former city
superviso, became
the first woman to
serve as mayor of
San Francisco in
1979. In 1992,
she was one of two
women from the state
of California elected
to the US Senate.
A lower court ruling
requiring Native
American students in
Oklahoma to cut their
hair to meet school
regulations was upheld by
the US Supreme Court
during this week in 1973.
During this month in
1983, Katherine Durnham, African American
dancer, choreographer
and anthropologist,
received a Kennedy
Center Honor—the
highest award an artist
in the US can receive.
During this week in 1991,
Mexican American actor
Martin Sheen (Ramon
Estevez) opened in a
revival of Arthur Miller’s
The Crucible at the
Belasco Theater in New
York.
One of the earliest
efforts by General
DeWill of the US to have
Japanese aliens placed in
internment camps while
the US was involved in
World War II was
initiated on this day in
1941. In this early
communication, DeWitt
urged the internment of
aliens of all countries
with whom the US was at
war, including Japan,
Germany, and Italy.
Lucy Ann StatonSessions of Cleveland,
Ohio, became the
first African American
woman college
graduate in the US
during this month in
1850. Ms. StantonSessions received a
Bachelor of Literature
degree from Oberlin
College in Oberlin,
Ohio.
In 1946 Wing F. Ong
became the first
Chinese American
elected to a state
legislature. Ong was
elected to the Arizona
State Legislature.
Attorney General of the
state of Massachusetts
Edward Brooke became
the first African
American to be elected
to the US Senate by
popular vote in 1966.
Senator Brooke was a
member of the
Republican party.
The Vietnam Memorial
was opened on this day in
1982 in Washington, DC.
The memorial was
designed by Maya Ying
Lin, a Vietnamese
American architecture
In 1917, 41 women from
15 states were arrested
outside the White House
in Washington, DC for
suffragette demonstrations. The women did
nothing more than picket
the White House with
signs demanding voting
rights. The arrested
women drew sentences
that ranged from six
days to six months
imprisonment.
student from Yale
University. It was the
first major tribute to
US soldiers who fought
in Vietnam.
William O. Douglas,
associate justice of
the US Supreme
Court, announced his
retirement from the
court in 1975.
Douglas served for 36
years, the longest term
of service of any
Supreme Court justice
through the year 1992.
He retired due to
illness. Justice Douglas
earned a reputation
during his service as a
civil libertarian,
broadly interpreting
the Constitution for
the benefit of the
rights of individuals,
including civil rights.
In 1990, President Bush
signed a bill that protected
the gravesites of Native
Americans and required the
return of remains and
artifacts from such sites to
the Native American tribes
to which they belonged.
President John F.
Kennedy was shot and
killed by a sniper’s
bullet as he rode in a
motorcade in Dallas,
Texas in 1963.He
became the fourth
president to be assassinated and the first in 62
years. Texas Governor
John Connally was also
wounded. Several hours
later, Lee Harvey Oswald
was arrested and charged
with the crime.
African American farmer
and inventor Andrew
Jackson Beard was
awarded a patent for his
“Jenny” coupler in 1899.
The coupler allowed train
cars to be joined
together simply by
bumping them against one
another. The device cut
back on serious injuries,
such as the loss of limbs,
that occurred frequently
using previous coupling
methods.
Following the murder
of President John F.
Kennedy two days
earlier, alleged
assassin Lee Harvey
Oswald was shot and
killed while being
escorted from a Dallas
jail. Oswald was shot
by Jack Ruby. The
event, captured by the
many television cameras
waiting to photograph
Oswald, became the
first nationally televised
murder. Ruby was
immediately apprehended following the incident.
In 1887, African
American inventor
Granville T. Woods, was
granted a patent for his
induction telegraph
system. The system
permitted communication
between moving trains,
making train travel
safer.
During this month in
1769, a school founded
20 years earlier by the
Reverend Eleazar
Wheelock for the
purpose of education
Native Americans
became Dartmouth
College. At the new
college’s inception, 10
of the 28 students
attending the school
were Native Americans.