On 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 […]
learn more*On this date in 1821, Nathan Forrest was born. He was a white-American slave trader and confederate army officer. Nathan Bedford Forrest was born into a poor settler family in a secluded frontier cabin near Chapel Hill, Tennessee, He was the first son of Mariam (Beck) and William Forrest. His father William was of English descent and his mother Mariam was […]
learn more*On this date in 1931 Frente Negra Brasileira was formed. Translated to English the Black Brazilian Front was part of the Black Movement of Brazil and was Brazil’s first Black political party. Formed in 1931 and active until the November 10, 1937 suspension of political parties by the then president, Getúlio Vargas. The party was organized by Arlindo Veiga dos Santos following the Revolution […]
learn more*On this date in 1925, Patrice Lumumba was born. He was a Black Congolese writer activist and politician. Patrice Emery Lumumba was the son of a farmer, François Tolenga Otetshima, and his wife Julienne Wamato Lomendja. He was born in Onalua in the Katakokombe region of the Kasai province of the Belgian Congo, of the Tetela ethnic group. He had three brothers (Charles Lokolonga, Émile Kalema, […]
learn more*On this date in 1927, David Dinkins was born. He is an African American politician, lawyer, and author. who from 1990 to 1993, served as the 106th Mayor of New York City. He was the first and, to date, the only African American to hold that office. David Norman Dinkins was born in Trenton, New Jersey, the son of Sarah “Sally” Lucy and William Harvey […]
learn more*On this date in 1823, Thomas Higginson was born. He was a white-American Unitarian minister, author, abolitionist, and soldier. Thomas Wentworth Higginson was born in Cambridge, MA. He entered Harvard College at age thirteen and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa at sixteen. He graduated in 1841 and was a schoolmaster for two years. In 1842 he became engaged to Mary Elizabeth Channing. He then studied theology […]
learn more*On this date in 1863, the 1st South Carolina Volunteer Infantry Regiment (Colored) was formed. This wasa Union Army regiment during the American Civil War, formed by General Rufus Saxton. It was composed of escaped slaves from South Carolina and Florida. It was one of the first black regiments in the Union Army. Department of the South staff officer James D. Fessenden was heavily involved in efforts to recruit volunteers […]
learn more*On this date in 1865, The Joint Committee on Reconstruction was established. Also known as the Joint Committee of Fifteen, this committee of the 39th United States Congress played a major role in Reconstruction in the wake of the American Civil War. It was created to “inquire into the condition of the States which formed the so-called Confederate States of America, and report whether […]
learn more*On this date in 1824, Rufus Saxton was born. He was a white-American Union Army brigadier general. Saxton was born in Greenfield, Massachusetts. His father, Jonathan Ashley Saxton, was a Unitarian and a Transcendentalist. His father attempted to secure a place for Rufus Saxton at Brook Farm in West Roxbury, Massachusetts, a transcendentalist community started by George Ripley and attended by Nathaniel Hawthorne. Saxton was educated at the United States Military Academy at West […]
learn moreDakota County (Minnesota) historian Heidi Langenfeld shares early black voting rights history in Hastings, Minnesota
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