*On this date in 1954, Amos v. Prom, Inc. was decided. This case involved a Black citizen being denied access to a public business based on race. The plaintiffs were George Dunn and William Pappas, citizens and residents of the State of Iowa. The defendant is a corporation organized under the laws of the State […]
learn more*On this date in 1954, the first Festa Confederada was celebrated. This partial preservation of the United States of America’s ‘Old South’ happens yearly at the end of April in Santa Barbara d’Oeste, near São Paulo, Brazil. With the historic Confederate loss of the American Civil War, many white-American southerners fled to Brazil, some for racial beliefs, […]
learn more*On this date in 1954, Bolling v. Sharpe was decided. This was a landmark United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held that the Constitution prohibits segregated public schools in the District of Columbia. Argued initially on December 10–11, 1952, a year before Brown v. Board of Education, Bolling was reargued on December 8–9, 1953, and was unanimously decided on May […]
learn more*The White Citizens’ Council was formed on this date in 1954. They were an associated network of white supremacist, extreme right organizations in the United States, concentrated in the American South. They were also called the White Citizens’ Councils. After 1956, the name was Citizens’ Councils of America. With about 60,000 members across the United States and in the South, the groups were founded primarily to […]
learn moreOn this date in 1954, Col. Benjamin O. Davis, Jr. was promoted to Brigadier General, the first African American to wear one star in the USAF.
learn moreOn this date in 1954, Algeria gained independence from France.
For more than a century, the Algerian people fought a permanent armed, moral, and political struggle against the invader and all its forms of oppression. This began after the aggression of 1830 against the Algerian State and the occupation of the country by the French colonialist forces. In the conflict the National Liberation Front called for the mobilization of all the energies of the nation, the process of struggle for independence having reached its final realization stage.
learn more*On this date in 1955, 15-year-old Black teenager Claudette Colvin was arrested for refusing to move out of her seat for a white woman on a public bus in Montgomery, Alabama.
She was violating the same segregation law that Rosa Parks ran into on nine months later. Colvin was the first person to plead not guilty to such a charge. Her attorney, Fred Gray, raised constitutional issues in her defense but she was convicted.
learn more*On this date in 1955, the Bandung Conference was held. This was the first large-scale Asian African or Afro Asian Conference ever held. The Bandung Conference was a meeting of Asian and African states, most of which were newly independent, which took place in Bandung, Indonesia. The twenty-nine participating countries represented a population of 1.5 […]
learn more*The Nickerson Gardens housing project was affirmed on this date in 1955. It is a complex that occupies the blocks northeast of Imperial Highway and the corner of Central Avenue in Watts, Los Angeles, California. Nickerson Gardens is the largest public housing development west of the Mississippi River. Its original architect was Paul Revere Williams. […]
learn moreOn this date in 1955, the first African American pitcher, Sam “Toothpick” Jones, tossed a no-hitter in major league baseball.
Jones, a member of the Chicago Cubs, no-hit the Pittsburgh Pirates 4–0, striking out the last three batters in the 9th after walking the bases loaded. Occurring in Chicago, it was the first no-hitter in Wrigley Field since the double no-hitter of 1917. The Cubs had 15 hits against Nellie King and Vernon Law that afternoon.
learn more*Pontchartrain Park opened on this date in 1955. This is one of the first Black suburban neighborhoods in the United States. Located in New Orleans, LA, Pontchartrain Park is a subdistrict of the Gentilly District Area. Its boundaries are Leon C. Simon Drive to the north, the Industrial Canal to the east, Dreux Avenue to the south, and […]
learn more*On this date in 1955, the Freedom Charter was the statement of core principles of the South African Congress Alliance, which consisted of the African National Congress (ANC) and its allies: the South African Indian Congress, the South African Congress of Democrats, and the Coloured People’s Congress. Its opening mandate characterizes it, “The People Shall Govern!” The […]
learn more*The Miles Davis Quintet is celebrated on this date in 1955. These were two jazz groups formed from 1955 to early 1969, led by Miles Davis. Most references pertain to two distinct and relatively stable bands: the First Great Quintet, from 1955 to 1959, and the Second Great Quintet, from late 1964 to early 1969, with Davis being […]
learn moreOn this date in 1955, Emmit Till was murdered.
Till was a 14-year-old African American boy who was beaten and shot to death by two white men. These men then threw the Till’s mutilated body into the Tallahatchie River near Money, Mississippi. Young Till was killed for talking to and perhaps whistling at a white woman at a Mississippi grocery store. Later that year, Roy Bryant, whose wife Carolyn was the white woman at the store, and his half brother, J. W. Milam, were tried for Till’s murder and acquitted by a jury of 12 white men.
learn moreOn this date in 1955, Sarah Keys v. Carolina Coach Company was ruled. This was a landmark civil rights case in the United States in which the Interstate Commerce Commission, in response to a bus segregation complaint filed in 1953 by Black Women’s Army Corps (WAC) private Sarah Louise Keys. This broke with its historic loyalty to the Plessy v. Ferguson separate but equal doctrine and interpreted the […]
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