Comedian and author Dick Gregory has been active since the ’60’s and is showing no signs of slowing down. Gregory turns 84 today and the activist remains fiery and opinionated as ever. Richard Claxton Gregory was born in 1932 in St. Louis. A star track and field athlete, Gregory ran for two years as a […]
On Tuesday, vice-presidential candidates Tim Kaine and Mike Pence squared off in the small Virginia town of Farmville. While the debate between the party rivals was the centerpiece, the town itself was home to an incident some consider to be one of the earliest protests that helped focus the Civil Rights Movement. On April 23, […]
The nation’s first Black-owned television station, WGPR, officially debuted on this day in 1975 in Detroit, Mich.. The station was the brainchild of William V. Banks, a son of a Kentucky sharecropper who also created Detroit’s first Black-owned radio station bearing the same call letters. William Venoid Banks was a Detroit attorney and leader of […]
In times past, African-Americans have pretended to pass as a white person to avoid harassment and discrimination. The reverse has happened many times as well,(think Rachel Dolezal) as in the case of Rev. L.M. Fenwick, who was a white pastor pretending to be Black. The Fenwick case is curious and not rich in detail, although historians […]
Dr. Ossain Sweet made headlines in the summer of 1925 after he successfully defended his home from an angry white mob in Detroit. The physician and ten of his brothers and friends all faced a pair of trials for killing a mob member but were acquitted by an all-white jury. Sweet was born on October […]
The Watts Rebellion, often referred to as the Watts Riot, began this day in 1965. Until 1992, it was the largest such disturbance the city has ever seen and historians point to a longstanding tension between police and the Black community as the impetus. Marquette Frye, then 21, and his brother Ronald were driving in […]
From Tommie and John’s Black Power salute to Gabby Douglas becoming the first African American to win an individual gymnastics title, here are some of the most memorable moments for African Americans in the Olympics.
From Tommie and John’s Black Power salute to Gabby Douglas becoming the first African American to win an individual gymnastics title, here are some of the most memorable moments for African Americans in the Olympics.
P.B.S. Pinchback was the first African-American governor of the United States, and was nearly a U.S. Senator before the racist power structure kept him…
Akilah Johnson is the first African-American artist to win the national competition, proving that Black art also matters.
Seventy-five years ago, a group of men made history. Those men were the Tuskegee Airmen. Today, they are being celebrated for their achievements in a…
Mississippi's governor signed a proclamation declaring April Confederate Heritage Month. The proclamation tries to justify the celebration, but is silent on slavery.
