Butts was born on August 10, 1965, in Brooklyn, New York, and at age nine moved to Durham, North Carolina.

Mob of white citizens and a hundred yoke of oxen pulled a Black school to a swamp outside the town of Canaan, New Hampshire.

Race riot, Cincinnati. More than one thousand Blacks left the city for Canada.

Race riot, Athens, Alabama.

Actor, Ira Aldridge, dies, 1867

Charles L. Gittens was an American Secret Service agent.  He joined the Secret Service in 1956, becoming the agencys first African American agent.  An Army veteran, Gittens began his career at the agencys office in Charlotte, North Carolina.  However, he was soon posted to its New York field office, where he was part of an elite “special detail” that targeted counterfeiters and other criminals across the country.

Gittens was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on August 31, 1928, one of seven children.  His father, a contractor, immigrated to the United States from Barbados.  Gittens enlisted in the United States Army before finishing high school.  He was promoted to lieutenant in the Army and was stationed in Japan during the Korean War.  Gittens earned his GED while serving in the Army.  After his discharge, Gittens earned a bachelors degree from present-day North Carolina Central University.  He completed the four-year academic program in three years, and graduated magna cum laude with a Bachelor of Arts degree in English and Spanish.

While teaching school in North Carolina, he was encouraged to take the Civil Service examination for Federal law enforcement agents.  After passing the exam, he was recruited into the United States Secret Service.  His career assignments included North Carolina, New York, Puerto Rico, and Washington, D.C.

His first marriage was to Ruth Hamme; the marriage ended in divorce after 28 years.  His 10-year marriage to Maureen Petersen also ended in divorce.  Survivors include a daughter from his first marriage (Sharon Quick of Washington, D.C.), and two stepdaughters.

Gittens spoke Spanish fluently and was assigned to Puerto Rico from 1968 to 1970 as the islands senior agent.  In 1969 he accompanied New York Gov. Nelson Rockefeller on his visit as presidential emissary to Latin America and the Caribbean republics.

In 1971, Gittens was appointed special agent in charge of the Washington, D.C. field office, a prestigious posting in which he supervised approximately 120 agents.

Composer and violinist, Clarence C White, born

The Coca-Cola Bottling Company agreed to pump $34 million into Black businesses and the Black community, ending a national boycott called by PUSH.

Anna Julia Cooper , née Anna Julia Haywood (born August 10, 1858?

James Conway Farley, the first African American to achieve prominence in the photography industry, was born on August 10, 1854 to slave parents in Prince Edwards County, Virginia.

Isaac Hayes died on August 10, 2008 in Memphis, Tennessee due to complications arising from a stroke.

Shirley Anita St. Hill Chisholm became in 1968 the first African American woman elected to Congress.  Four years later in 1972, she launched a bid to become the Democratic nominee for President of the United States, another first for an African American woman.  Throughout her career in Congress Chisholm was a staunch advocate of women’s rights and civil rights.   On August 10, 1970, she delivered a speech on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives urging support for the Equal Rights Amendment.  That speech appears below.

Mr. Speaker, House Joint Resolution 264, before us today, which provides for equality under the law for both men and women, represents one of the most clear-cut opportunities we are likely to have to declare our faith in the principles that shaped our Constitution. It provides a legal basis for attack on the most subtle, most pervasive, and most institutionalized form of prejudice that exists. Discrimination against women, solely on the basis of their sex, is so widespread that is seems to many persons normal, natural and right.

Legal expression of prejudice on the grounds of religious or political belief has become a minor problem in our society. Prejudice on the basis of race is, at least, under systematic attack. There is reason for optimism that it will start to die with the present, older generation. It is time we act to assure full equality of opportunity to those citizens who, although in a majority, suffer the restrictions that are commonly imposed on minorities, to women.

The argument that this amendment will not solve the problem of sex discrimination is not relevant. If the argument were used against a civil rights bill, as it has been used in the past, the prejudice that lies behind it would be embarrassing. Of course laws will not eliminate prejudice from the hearts of human beings. But that is no reason to allow prejudice to continue to be enshrined in our laws -- to perpetuate injustice through inaction.

The amendment is necessary to clarify countless ambiguities and

Singer Patti Austin was born on this day. Patti will record songs such as In and Out of love.

On August 10, 1817, James Forten and Russel Perrott served as chairman and secretary of a large indignation meeting of Philadelphia’s free African American community. The gathering protested the efforts of the year-old American Colonization Society to recruit blacks to leave the United States for Africa. Although many African Americans initially supported ACS efforts, these Philadelphians apparently recognized that the migration of the small free black population, which was most vocal in its opposition to slavery, would strengthen rather than weaken the institution. Forten and Perrott expressed their views in this joint address to Philadelphia’s white community.

The free people of colour, assembled together, under circumstances of deep interest to their happiness and welfare, humbly and respectfully lay before you this expression of their feelings and apprehensions.

Relieved from the miseries of slavery, many of us by your aid, possessing the benefits which industry and integrity in this pros¬perous country assure to all its inhabitants, enjoying the rich bless¬ings of religion, by opportunities of worshiping the only true God, under the light of Christianity, each of us according to his under¬standing; and having afforded to us and to our children the means of education and improvement; we have no wish to separate from our present homes, for any purpose whatever. Contented with our present situation and condition we are not desirous of increasing their prosperity, but by honest efforts and by the use of those oppor¬tunities for their improvement, which the constitution and laws allow to all. It is therefore with painful solicitude, and sorrowing regret, we have seen a plan for colonizing the free people of colour of the United States on the coast of Africa, brought forward under the auspices and sanction of gentlemen whose names give value to all they recommend, and who certainly are among the wisest, the best, and the most benevolent of men, in this great nation.

If the plan of colonizing is intended for our