On this Day in Black History

1817(?) - Frederick Douglass
1872 - Alcorn A and M College opens
1872 - William Monroe Trotter born
1882 - Emma Rochelle Wheeler born (studied at Meharry in Nashville)
1883 - Eubie Blake, Ragtime/showtune pianist , born
1890 - W.B. Purvis receives a patent for a fountain pen.
1891 - Zora Neale Hurston born
1908(?) - Henry "Red" Allen born
1926 - Carter Woodson initiates National Negro Week.
1934 - Earl King born
1934 - King Curtis born
1941 - Frederick Drew Gregory, the first black space commander, born
1950 - The James Weldon Johnson Collection opens for research at Yale University
1955 - Marian Anderson sings in Verdi's "Masked Ball" at the Metropolitan Opera House. She is the first African American woman to sing at the Met. (and she was a friend of my grandmother)
1959 - Eddie "Guitar Slim" Jones dies of pneumonia @ 33
1965 - Cassius Clay becomes a Muslim and adopts the name Muhammad Ali
1966 - Chris Rock born
1974 - Maynard Jackson becomes the first black mayor of a Southern city (Atlanta, GA) since Reconstruction.
1986 - Haiti's President-for-Life Jean-Claude Duvalier flees to France Henri Namphy becomes leader of Haiti
1988 - Mike Tyson marries actress Robin Givens
1991 - Jean-Bertrand Aristide sworn in as Haiti's 1st elected president
1995 - Tupac Shakur is sentenced to one-to-four-and-a-half years in jail for sexual abuse.

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