On this Day in Black History

1688 - First Formal Protest Against Slavery. Organized by Mennonite Quakers in Germantown, PA, they passes a resolution condemning slavery.
1795 - George Peabody, U.S. merchant and philanthropist
1861 - Jefferson Davis was inaugurated as the President of the Confederate States.
1865 - Charleston surrenders; Sherman's troops burn the city. Fifty-fourth Massachusetts Volunteers were among the first Union troops to enter the city.
1867 - Augusta Institute was founded at Augusta, GA which was later to become Morehouse College, following its relocation to Atlanta.
1885 - Mark Twain's "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" was published in the U.S. for the first time.
1894 - Paul Revere Williams, renowned architect, born
1913 - Delta Sigma Theta sorority is founded at Howard University.
1931 - Toni Morrison born. She will be the first African American to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature
1934 - Audre Lorde born
1941 - Irma Thomas born
1941 - Herman Santiago (Frankie Lymon & The Teenagers)
1949 - William L. Dawson was the first black to head a Congressional standing committee, the House Expenditures Committee.
1952 - Randy (Veronica) Crawford born
1959 - Ray Charles recorded "What'd I Say."
1965 - Dr. Dre born
1965 - Gambia gains independence from Britain
1972 - The California Supreme Court struck down the state's death penalty.
1973 - Palmer Hayden dies
1976 - Chanda Rubin born
1979 - "Roots: The Next Generations" premieres on ABC-TV
1995 - The NAACP replaced veteran chairman William Gibson with Myrlie Evers-Williams, the widow of slain civil rights leader Medgar Evers

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