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The 15th Amendment
The Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution prohibits the federal and state governments from denying a citizen the right to vote based on that citizen's "race, color, or previous condition of servitude". It was ratified on February 3, 1870, as the third and last of the Reconstruction Amendments.
In the final years of the American Civil War and the Reconstruction Era that followed, Congress repeatedly debated the rights of the millions of black former slaves. By 1869 -
The first black member of the U.S. House of Representatives
Pinckney Benton Stewart Pinchback (born Pinckney Benton Stewart; May 10, 1837 – December 21, 1921) was a publisher and politician, a Union Army officer, and the first person of African descent to become governor of a U.S. state. He was born free in Georgia. A Republican, Pinchback served as the 24th Governor of Louisiana for 15 days, from December 29, 1872, to January 13, 1873. He was later elected to the state legislature, serving in 1879-1880. -
Trained Africans
Since the Civil War, 30,000 African-American teachers had been trained and put to work in the South. The majority of blacks had become literate. -
African-American Sorority
Alpha Kappa Alpha is the first Greek-lettered sorority established and incorporated by African-American college women. Membership is primarily for college educated women, but not all members have attended college.The sorority was founded on January 15, 1908, at Howard University in Washington, D.C., by a group of twenty students, led by Ethel Hedgeman Lyle. Forming a sorority broke barriers for African-American women in areas where there was little power. -
Negro National League Esatblished
The Negro National League was one of the several Negro leagues which were established during the period in the United States in which organized baseball was segregated. -
First African-American examiner on the American Board of Surgery
Charles Richard Drew was an American physician, surgeon, and medical researcher. He researched in the field of blood transfusions, developing improved techniques for blood storage, and applied his expert knowledge to developing large-scale blood banks early in World War II. This allowed medics to save thousands of lives of the Allied forces.The research and development aspect of his blood storage work is disputed. -
Jackie Robinson
Jack Roosevelt "Jackie" Robinson was an American baseball player who became the first African American to play in Major League Baseball in the modern era. Robinson broke the baseball color line when the Brooklyn Dodgers started him at first base on April 15, 1947. As the first major league team to play a black man since the 1880s, the Dodgers ended racial segregation that had relegated black players to the Negro leagues for six decades. -
Bombings
The home of NAACP activists Harry and Harriette Moore in Mims, Florida, is bombed by KKK group; both die of injuries. -
Edward Brooke- First Black Senator since 1881
Edward William Brooke III (born October 26, 1919) is an American Republican politician, in 1966 being the first African American popularly elected to the United States Senate. He was the only person of African heritage sent to the Senate in the 20th century until Democrat Carol Moseley Braun of Illinois in 1993, and the only African-American Senator to serve multiple terms. He was elected to the Senate as a Republican from Massachusetts, defeating his Democratic opponent former Massachusetts go. -
The film THE WATERMELON MAN is released
Watermelon Man is a 1970 American comedy-drama film, directed by Melvin Van Peebles. Written by Herman Raucher, it tells the story of an extremely bigoted 1960's era White insurance salesman named Jeff Gerber, who wakes up one morning to find that he has become Black. The premise for the film was inspired by Franz Kafka's Metamorphosis, and by John Howard Griffin's autobiographical Black Like Me. -
Micheal Jackson- Thriller
Thriller is the sixth studio album by the American recording artist Michael Jackson. It was released on November 30, 1982, by Epic Records, as the follow-up to Jackson's critically and commercially successful 1979 album Off the Wall. Thriller explores similar genres to those of Off the Wall, including pop, R&B, rock, post-disco, funk, and adult contemporary music. Recording sessions took place between April and November 1982 at Westlake Recording Studios in Los Angeles, California. -
Barrack Obama Awarded Nobel Prize
He defeated Republican nominee John McCain in the general election, and was inaugurated as president on January 20, 2009. Nine months after his election, Obama was named the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize laureate.
