On This Day In Black History...

1746 ~ Minister and abolitionist Absalom Jones was born into slavery in Sussex, Delaware. He becomes the 1st Black Episcopal Church priest

1860 ~ Abraham Lincoln is elected the 16th president of the United States. His opposition to the expansion of slavery prompted Slave-owning states to secede from the union which brought about the Civil War. Lincoln’s opposition to slavery was epitomized in his now famous phrase, “A nation cannot exist half-slave and half-free.”

1900 ~ James Weldon Johnson composes “Lift Ev’ry Voice And Sing.” The song becomes the “Black National Anthem” that is appropriately still sang at all meaningful Black events! Do you know the words? That is your task. Learn and memorize at least the 1st verse. Teach it to your children!!! (smile)

1928 ~ Oscar DePriest (1871-1951) is elected to the 71st U.S. Congress (Illinois) He was the 1st Black congressman from the North and the 1st to take a seat in Congress since Jim Crow laws and attitudes drove the last Black from Congress in 1901.

1962 ~ The United Nations adopted a resolution condemning South Africa's racist apartheid policies and called on all member states to terminate economic and military relations with the country.

1968 ~ The longest campus strike in U.S. history, led by the Black Student Union and Third World Liberation Front, began at San Francisco State University, where the students presented their set of 15 "non-negotiable" demands, which included the expansion of the College's new Black Studies Department (the nation's first), the creation of a School of Ethnic Studies, and increased recruiting and admissions of minority students.

1973 ~ Coleman Young and Thomas Bradley are elected first Black Mayors of major American cities; Detroit, Michigan and Los Angeles, California respectively.

1990 ~ Sharon Pratt Dixon-Kelly is elected the first Black female Mayor of Washington, D.C.