On this date in 1944, The American Army started the “Red Ball Express,” a huge trucking operation to supply World War II troops in Europe with provisions.
learn moreOn this date in 1944, the Navy integrated their Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service better known as WAVES.
Up to that time, black women were barred from the WAVES. The efforts of Mildred McAfee and Dr. Mary McLeod Bethune helped the Secretary of the Navy push through the admittance of African American women into military service.
The first two black WAVES officers, Harriet Ida Pikens and Frances Wills, were sworn in December 22 of that year. Of the 80,000 WAVES in the World War II, 72 Black women served, normally under integrated conditions.
learn more*The 761st Tank Battalion saw combat on this date in 1944. It was a Black segregated tank battalion of the United States Army during World War II. The 761st were known as the Black Panthers after their distinctive unit insignia, which featured a black panther’s head. The unit’s motto was “Come out fighting.” The battalion […]
learn more*On this date in 1944, Korematsu v. the United States, 323 U.S. 214 (1944), was decided. This was a landmark United States Supreme Court case upholding the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II. The case exemplifies the racial intersectionality between Asian Americans and African Americans in the United States. The decision has widely been criticized, with some scholars describing it as “an […]
learn more*On his date in 1945, Lena Baker, an African American mother of three, was electrocuted at the Georgia State Prison in Reidsville.
She was convicted for the fatal shooting of E. B. Knight, a white Cuthbert, GA mill operator she was hired to care for after he broke his leg. She was 44 and the only woman ever executed in Georgia’s electric chair. For Baker, a Black maid in the segregated south in the 1940’s, her story was a tough sell to a jury of 12 white men. And rumors that she was romantically involved with victim E. B. Knight did not help.
learn more*The Fultz Quadruplets were born on this date in 1946. They were the first identical Black quad babies born in the United States.
learn moreOn this date in 1946, the U. S. Supreme Court decided Morgan v. Virginia, a landmark case in which the United States Supreme Court ruled that segregation in interstate bus travel was unconstitutional.
learn moreOn this date in 1946, the Monroe Massacre occurred, one of the most atrocious mass murders in the history of lynching in the United States. A lynch mob killed two young black couples Roger and Dorothy Malcolm and George and Mae Murray Dorsey.
learn more*On this date in 1946 the first U. S. Mint was created by an African American. Sculptor, Isaac Hathaway was chosen as the designer of the American coin.
On that date, President Harry S. Truman authorized a commission by the U. S. Mint of a fifty cent piece “to commemorate the life and perpetuate the ideas and teachings of Booker T. Washington.”
learn moreOn this date in 1947, The Journey of Reconciliation is celebrated. This was the first civil rights freedom ride through the American South.
George Houser and Bayard Rustin were its primary organizers. It was sponsored by CORE and the Fellowship For Reconciliation. Black and white members ventured on a “Journey of Reconciliation,” trying to force the federal government to uphold the 1946 Supreme Court ruling that segregated seating of interstate passengers was unconstitutional.
The original riders were arrested in North Carolina and forced to serve on a chain gang for six months.
learn moreThis date in 1947 marks the integration of baseball’s American League.
The Cleveland Indians were the first baseball team to integrate its team the summer if 1947, just a few months after Jackie Robinson first debuted for the Brooklyn Dodgers. The first black man to play in the Junior Circuit was the somewhat overlooked Larry Doby.
learn more*On this date in 1947, St. Louis parochial schools were put on notice to include Black kids or face religious discipline.
Archbishop Joseph E. Ritter publicly said he would excommunicate any St. Louis Catholic who continued to protest integration of parochial schools. The start of this order was one of Ritter’s first acts on 1946, his first year in St. Louis. At that time he instructed all pastors in the archdiocese to end racial segregation in the parochial schools. The U. S. Supreme Court would not take the same action with the nation’s public schools until 1954.
learn moreOn this date in 1947, the NAACP issued a formal petition against racism in America to the United Nations titled “An Appeal to the World.”
Eleanor Roosevelt, an active NAACP board member from 1945 to 1958, initiated the U.N.’s human rights protocol. Roy Wilkins, NAACP executive director (1955-1978), led the United States delegation to the International Conference on Human Rights in 1968.
In 2001, the NAACP applied for affiliation as a non-governmental organization (NGO). NAACP President and CEO Kweisi Mfume said that the pending U.N.
learn moreOn this date in 1948, the Armed Services integrated its women’s defense organizations.
Ensign Edith De Voe was sworn into the Regular Navy Nurse Corps and in March, First Lieutenant Nancy C. Leftenant entered the Regular Army Nurse Corps, becoming the corps’ first Black members. Following World War II, racial and gender discrimination as well as segregation persisted in the military. Entry quotas and segregation in the Women’s Army Corps (WACs) deterred many from re-entry between 1946 and 1947. By June 1948, only four Black officers and 121 enlisted women remained in the WAC.
learn more*Black history and modern American urban renewal are affirmed in 1948. This relocation of people began with the Taft-Ellender-Wagner housing bill, which had passed the Senate at the time. The Urban Renewal Act of 1949 followed and set up urban renewal projects in cities across North America and the United States. Urban renewal, especially at […]
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