After Nat Turner was captured, he was interview in jail

by a Baltimore lawyer, Thomas R. Gray. Nat give in some detail

the hows and whys of his actions. The complete

interview can be read at the following URL:

http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Parthenon/5674/

Race riot, Wilmington, North Carolina. Eight Blacks were killed.

The African Union Society of Newport, Rhode Island, was the first attested Black mutual aid society.

National Benefit Life Insurance Company organized in Washington, D.C., Samuel w. Rutherford. National Benefit was the largest Black insurance company for several years.

Granville T Woods puts patents the electric railway, 1891

President John F. Kennedy named Andrew T. Hatcher associate press secretary. Hatcher was the first Black to hold this position.

By winning the Long Beach Open, Charlie Sifford became the first Black person to win a major professional

golf tournament, 1957

Thegrandson of a British explorer and the son of a pharmacist, Augustus Freeman “Gus”Hawkins was born in Shreveport, Louisianabut moved with his family to Los Angeles, Californiain 1918.  He earned a degree in economicsfrom the University of California at Los Angeles in 1931 and later attendedgraduate classes at the University of Southern California.  Inspired by the socialist writer UptonSinclair, he assisted in Sinclair’s failed run for California governor andlater worked to get out the vote for Franklin D. Roosevelt in the Presidentialelection of 1932.

Learning from these experiences, in 1934 he successfully challenged the state’sfirst black Assemblyman, Frederick M.Roberts, a Republican representing the 62nd District.  A low-key but highly effective Assemblyman,over a the next 28 years, Hawkins, a former real estate salesman, introducedlegislation impacting urban redevelopment, workmen’s compensation,apprenticeship training, mass transportation, day care, fair housing, and also chairedcommittees pertaining to labor, rules and procedures, legislative organization,and public utilities.  In 1959 henarrowly missed being voted Speaker of the Assembly.

In 1962 Hawkins, with the enthusiastic support of President John F. Kennedy,was elected to serve in the US House of Representatives from California’s 29thDistrict, thus becoming not only the state’s first black Congressman but alsothe first black elected to Congress west of the Mississippi River.  At the pinnacle of this political career hewas chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee and co-sponsored withMinnesota Sen. Hubert H. Humphrey the Full Employment and Balanced Growth Actof 1978 (better known as the Humphrey-Hawkins Act) which promoted the goal offull employment and required the Federal Reserve Board report to Congressconcerning the nation’s economic health.  Among other measures he championed were TitleI of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (better known as “No Child LeftBehind”) and Title VII of the 1964 CivilRights Act which

One hundred and one Blacks reported lynched in 1898.

1961: Andrew hatcher is named associate press secretary to President John F. Kennedy.

Carmen McRae A noted Jazz singer died on November 10, 1994

George P. White was an outspoken Republican political leader, two-term Congressman from the Black 2nd (northeastern North Carolina). He introduced the first anti-lynching legislation into the Congress (it was defeated), founded the first black bank, and, after leaving North Carolina in the wake of Black disenfranchisement in 1901, founded an all black community called Whiteville near Trenton, New Jersey. After White left, it would be seventy years before North Carolina sent another African American to the US Congress

Brash, bold, provocative, and edgy. These are just some of the many words that were used to describe the poet and performer Essex Hemphill who was known for his outspoken, direct, and often confrontational poems and articles. Hemphill was also unapologetic about his open homosexuality. The oldest of five children, Hemphill was born on April 16, 1957 in Chicago, Illinois to parents Mantalene and Warren Hemphill. Although he was born in the Midwest, he was raised in Washington, D.C during his formative years. During his early teens, Hemphill began to write poetry.    

In the fall of 1975, Hemphill enrolled at the University of Maryland at College Park where he studied English. While an undergraduate student at the university, he began to further explore and cultivate his literary curiosity and talents. In 1978, he and fellow student Kathy Elaine Anderson founded a journal entitled Nethula Journal of Contemporary Literature. It was during a poetry reading at Howard University in 1980 that he proclaimed his homosexuality.  After his tenure at Maryland, Hemphill joined the performance poetry group, Cinque, in the early 1980s. His partners in this effort were Wayson Jones and Larry Duckett.

Although the Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) epidemic had already ravished the gay community for some time, by the mid-1980s the majority of Americans were now aware of its devastation.  Hemphill’s first books, Earth Life (1985) and Conditions (1986), both addressed the impact of AIDS on both the black community and the larger gay community. His critically acclaimed anthology, In the Life, which also appeared in 1986, brought Hemphill his first significant national recognition. In the Life, one of the first collections of writings by gay black men, opened to the general public the topic of homosexuality in African America. Hemphill’s Brother to Brother (1988), a collection of essays written by gay black men, was also considered groundbreaking at the time.  

In 1989, Hemphill starred in the Marlon Riggs film Tongues