Thursday 13 - Black Facts

For some unknown reason, I've been getting a lot of hits on any of my pages that are about "Black Facts". So, in typical Traffic Whore fashion, I am doing a TT of Black Facts. I will be using this week's dates. (12/23 - 12/29)

On This Date in Black History:

1. 12/23/1863 - Robert Blake, powder boy aboard the USS Marbelhead, was the first Black awarded the Naval Medal of Honor "for conspicuous gallantry, extraordinary heroism, and intrepidity at the risk of his own life."

2. 12/23/1867 - Madame C.J. Walker, born Sarah Breedlove on this day, starts a Black hair-care business in Denver, CO; she alters curling irons that were popularized by the French to suit the texture of Black women's hair. She is arguably the first woman millionaire in the U.S. (Suck on that, Oprah!)

3. 12/24/1881 - Tennessee started modern segregation movement with Jim Crow railroad car and was followed by Florida (1887), Mississippi (1888), Texas (1889), Louisiana (1890), Alabama, Kentucky, Arkansas and Georgia (1891), South Carolina (1898), North Carolina (1899), Virginia (1900), Maryland (1904), Oklahoma (1907).

4. 12/24/1992 - The position of Secretary of Agriculture was awarded to Alphonso Michael "Mike" Espy, making him the first Black to hold this position.

5. 12/25/1760 - Jupiter Hammon, New York slave who was probably the first Black poet, published An Evening Thought: Salvation by Christ, with Penitential Cries.

6. 12/25/1837 - Charles Lenox Remond began his career as an antislavery agent. Remond was one of the first Blacks employed as a lecturer by the antislavery movement.

7. 12/26/1848 - William and Ellen Craft escaped from slavery in Georgia. Mrs. Craft impersonated a slave holder and her husband, William, assumed the role of her servant in one of the most dramatic of the slave escapes.

8. 12/26/1908 - Jackson Johnson defeated Tommy Burns in Sydney, Australia, for the heavyweight Championship. Burns will later say of his loss, "Race prejudice was rampant in my mind. The idea of a black man challenging me was beyond enduring. Hatred made me tense."

9. 12/27/1892 - Livingstone and Biddle College (now Johnson C. Smith) play the first African American intercollegiate football game.

10. 12/27/1939 - John Amos, actor, made famous in "Good Times" television program, born.

11. 12/28/1829 - Elizabeth "Mumbet" Freeman, dies. Born into slavery, she ran away form her owners after mistreatment by her master's wife. She petitioned successfully for her freedom, citing her knowledge of the Bill of Rights and the new constitution of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in her argument that all men were created equal, thereby justifying her petition for freedom, Her victory effectively abolished slavery in Massachusetts. Freeman was the great-grandmother of W.E.B. DuBois, one of America's most renowned scholars, leaders, and fighters for civil rights.

12. 12/28/1905 - Famed jazz musician and father of modern jazz piano, Earl "Fatha" Hines was born.

13. 12/29/1845 - Robert Weaver, born on this day, became the first Black appointed to a presidential cabinet when President Lyndon B. Johnson named him to head the newly created Department of Housing and Urban Development.

All facts come from Black Facts Online.



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Listening to: James Brown - James Brown - The Big Payback
via FoxyTunes