*On this date in 2002, the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) became law. This is a United States federal law that was signed into law by President George W. Bush. The bill was drafted (at least partly) in reaction to the controversy surrounding the 2000 U.S. presidential election when the Florida Central Voter File disqualified almost […]
learn moreOn this date in 2002, Trent Lott, a White Republican senator from Mississippi, resigned his position as Senate majority leader.
Lott’s tumble followed a tribute that he gave earlier in the month at Senator Strom Thurmond’s 100th birthday party. The Mississippian hailed the respected South Carolinian and said he thought the nation would have been better off if Thurmond had won his campaign for the presidency in 1948. Thurmond ran as a Dixiecrat at the time, on a segregationist platform.
learn moreOn this date in 2003, H.R. 3491 was signed into law, launching the National Museum of African American History.
Signed by President George W. Bush in the Oval Office, the act authorizes the creation of a Smithsonian Institution museum dedicated to the legacy of African Americans in America.
The bill also states that a site should be selected within 12 months. The museum could be opened by 2013.
learn more*On this date in 2004, The Pan-African Parliament (PAP) was founded. Also known as the African Parliament, it is the legislative body of the African Union. It held its inaugural session in March 2004. For the first five years, the Parliament exercised oversight and had advisory and consultative powers. Initially, the seat of the Pan-African […]
learn more*On this date in 2004, a 76-year-old African American prisoner walked out of jail, a free man after 41 years of imprisonment.
Texas State District Judge David Wilson dismissed the conviction against Robert Carroll Coney, convicted of a 1962 robbery. Showing a surprising lack of bitterness as he left Angelina County Jail with his wife on Tuesday Coney said. “I’m going to try to pick up the pieces.” Coney said his identity had been confused with a man he had carpooled with through Lufkin, TX on the day of the crime: March 7, 1962.
learn moreOn this date in 2004, the Cracker Barrel restaurant chain agreed to an $8.7 million settlement to resolve all lawsuits brought or supported by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). The civil rights organization accused the restaurant chain of segregating Blacks in the smoking section and denying them service.
“This matter has been resolved to everyone’s satisfaction and the parties are now ready to move forward,” said Donald Turner, the chain’s president and chief operating officer.
learn moreOn this date in 2004, Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed was elected as president of Somali.
Ahmed extended an olive branch to warlords he defeated and urged neighboring states to help rebuild Somalia. The east African country has been in a state of chaos since 1991. Yusuf has served as president of the autonomous northeastern region of Puntland since 1998 and was a faction leader and army officer. He beat 25 candidates, in which the 275 members of an interim legislature voted.
learn moreOn this date in 2004, Condoleezza Rice became the first African American Secretary of State in America.
She was appointed by President George W. Bush The former National Security Adviser since 2001 was the second Black (after Colin Powell) and second female (after Madeleine Albright) to serve as Secretary of State.
learn more*On this date in 2006, the first Black African born Swedish politician became a Minister. Nyamko Sabuni is a project manager and administrator. Sabuni moved to Sweden from Burundi at the age of 12. In her campaign, she suggested that all girls should undergo compulsory checks for genital mutilation (known as female circumcision); which led […]
learn moreOn this date in 2006, Minneapolis, MN, elected the nation’s first Muslim member of Congress, and the state’s first nonwhite representative in Washington.
learn moreOn this date in 2007, Jacob Zuma was elected leader of the governing African National Congress (ANC).
Zuma, a populist whose political career survived rape and corruption charges, received 2,329 votes, ahead of incumbent Thabo Mbeki’s 1,505 votes, following one of the most divisive campaigns the party has seen. The win put Zuma into a position to become South Africa’s president in 2009. As the results were announced, chaos erupted in the hall; then Mbeki and Zuma, both 65-year-old veterans of the ANC in exile, mounted the stage together and embraced.
learn moreOn this date in 2008, Senator Barack Obama of Illinois won the Democratic presidential nomination.
This historic step made him the nation’s first Black president candidate. Obama defeated Hillary Rodham Clinton and set up a five-month campaign with Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona, a race between a 46-year-old opponent of the Iraq War and a 71-year-old former Vietnam prisoner of war and staunch supporter of the current U.S. military mission.
learn more*On this date in 2008, The House of Representatives passed a resolution apologizing to African Americans for slavery and the era of Jim Crow.
learn moreOn this date in 2008 Barack Obama became the first Black man to be elected president of the United States of America.
Obama, the multiracial son of a white mother from Kansas and an African father from Kenya, was elected as the 44th president of the United States, writing a remarkable new chapter in American history with a campaign built on the theme of hope.
learn more*On this date in 2014, the first Black Republican woman was elected to Congress in U.S. history.
Utah Voters sent Mia Love, the former small-town mayor in that state to Washington DC. She won a narrow victory in the state’s open Fourth Congressional District adding noticeable buzz to the Republican celebrations over their election-night shellacking of Democrats across the country.
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