On this Day in Black History

1814 - Napoleon was forced to abdicate his throne. He was banished to the island of Elba.
1865 - President Lincoln recommended suffrage for Black veterans and Blacks.
1880 - Willa Townsend born
1881 - Atlanta Baptist Female Seminary (Spelman College), an institution sponsored by John D. Rockefeller's family, opened. It became the "Radcliffe and the Sarah Lawrence of Negro education."
1899 - Percy L. Julian born
1908 - Jane Bolin born
1933 - Tony Brown (Tony Brown's Journal) born
1947 - Jackie Robinson became the first black player in major-league history.
1956 - Nat "King" Cole attacked by whites while performing at the Birmingham Municipal Auditorium
1961 - Bob Dylan played his first live gig in New York at Gerde's Folk City; he opened for John Lee Hooker
1966 - Lisa Stansfield born
1967 - Congressman Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. was re-elected
1968 - Lyndon B Johnson signed the 1968 Fair Housing Act
1972 - Benjamin L. Hooks became the 1st African-American named to the Federal Communications Commission
1979 - Idi Amin was deposed as president of Uganda
1981 - Race riot in London area of Brixton
1987 - Joss Stone born
1988 - Willie D. Burton became the 1st African-American to win the Oscar for sound (Bird)
1996 - Forty-three African nations signed the African Nuclear Weapons Free Zone Treaty
1997 - The new Museum of African American History opened
1999 - Daouda Malam Wanke was designated president of Niger. President Ibrahim Baré Maïnassara had been assassinated on April 9.