Emmett Ashford became the first Black major league umpire.

Dr. Percy Lavon Julian was an African American chemist who is most well known for extracting medicinal drugs from plants. He was born in Montgomery, Alabama on April 11, 1899 to James Sumner and Elizabeth Lena Julian. His grandparents had been slaves in the Civil War era and Julian grew up facing immense racial segregation. His parents were intent on getting a good education for their children, despite the fact that there were no high schools for black students at the time. Julian studied till 8th grade but could not finish his high school education beyond that. Undeterred, he applied to DePauw University in Greencastle, Indiana where he had to first take additional evening classes to bring himself at par with his fellow students as he hadn’t completed his high school education. Julian was not allowed to live in the college dorms or eat meals there so he had to find off campus accommodation for himself. He also held a number of odd jobs to support his education including waiting tables and working at a fraternity house, where he slept in the attic.

Percy Julian graduated from DePauw University in 1920 with honors and as the class valedictorian. He then joined Fisk University as a chemistry instructor, before receiving an Austin Fellowship in Chemistry in 1923 which allowed him to attend Harvard University. However, his teaching assistantship was withdrawn as the management felt that other students would resent being taught by an African American, so Julian left Harvard since he would be unable to complete his Ph.D. there. A few years later, he was awarded a Rockefeller Foundation fellowship which allowed him to pursue his Ph.D. at the University of Vienna. Europe was relatively free from the racial prejudice that prevailed in America, and Julian enjoyed participating in discussions and social gatherings with his peers. He received his Ph.D. in 1931 which made him one of the first few African Americans to have achieved this.

Julian then returned to America and obtained a teaching position at Howard University.

Spelman College, an institution sponsored by John D. Rockefellers family, opened for Negro women in Atlanta, Georgia. It became the Radcliffe and the Sarah Lawrence of Negro education.

By 1816 there were several African Methodist

Churches around the country and that year they met

to form the African Methodist Episcopal (AME)

church. On April 11, 1816 Richard Allen was name

the first bishop of this church.

Jackie

Robinson

signs a

professional

baseball

contract and

becomes

the first black

player in the

major

leagues.

President Johnson signed a the 1968 Housing Act which outlawed discrimination in the sale, rental or leasing of housing. This bill also made it a crime to interfere with civil rights workers and to cross state lines to incite a riot.

President Lincoln recommended suffrage for Black veterans and Blacks.

Idaho became the 47th state to recognize Jan. 15 as Martin Luther King, Jr. Day and as a national holiday.

Tony Brown, television journalist, born

The new Museum of African American History opens in Detroit.

It is the largest of its kind in the world.

Benjamin L. Hooks, a Memphis lawyer-minister, becomes the first African American named to the Federal Communications Commission.

Percy Julian was born on April 11, 1899 in Birmingham, Alabama, one of six children.

Roy Wilkins is elected NAACP executive secretary following the death of Walter White

Percy Julian , in full Percy Lavon Julian (born April 11, 1899, Montgomery, Alabama, U.

George Poage ran track in the 1904 Olympic games and was the first African American to ever win an Olympic medal. Poage was born in Hannibal, Missouri on November 6, 1880, but spent most of his childhood growing up in La Crosse, Wisconsin. As a teen, he excelled both in academics and athletics. Poage attended La Crosse High School, ranked second in his class, and was his commencement salutatorian. He also was the first African American to graduate from the school. Poage received his high school diploma in 1899 and decided to continue his education at the University of Wisconsin.

Poage was the first black athlete to run for the University of Wisconsin. Poage joined the school’s freshman track team and made the varsity team his sophomore year. He consistently won points for the Badgers in his specialized events, short sprints and hurdles, quickly gaining the respect of his team mates. After graduating in 1903 with a degree in history, Poage returned to UW to take graduate classes and continue running track. He continued to break barriers and set records as an athlete, becoming in 1903 the first African American Big Ten track champion (individually) by placing first in the 440-yard dash and the 220-yard hurdles.

In 1904, the third Olympic games were being held at the World’s Fair in St. Louis. However, separate facilities had been built for African American spectators, causing many people to boycott the Games in protest of racial segregation. Despite calls for black athletes to avoid the games, Poage decided to compete. Poage became the first African American to medal in the Olympics, placing third in the 220-yard hurdles and the 440-yard hurdles.

Following his short career as a runner, Poage moved to St. Louis to become a teacher at Charles Sumner High School. Spending just under 10 years there, in 1914 he purchased a farm in Minnesota. By 1920 he relocated to Chicago. He encountered few opportunities as an African American despite his athletic and academic successes, and after a series of jobs he eventually

Chemist Percy Julian born in Montgomery, Alabama. Julian studied at DePauwm, Fisk, Harvard and Vienna (Germany) Universities. In his lifetime he discovered several synthetic substances including one that made paint water-tight, cortisone and a fire suppressing foam.

Singer Nat King Cole attacked on stage of Birmingham theater by whites who were very intelligent.

Willie D. Burton becomes the first African American to win the Oscar for sound, for the movie Bird.

Dr. Carolyn L. Robertson Payton was the first African American and the first woman to become the director of the U.S. Peace Corps. She was appointed in 1977 by U.S. President Jimmy Carter.

Carolyn L. Robertson Payton was born on May 13, 1925, in Norfolk, Virginia, to Bertha M. Flanagan, a seamstress, and Leroy S. Robertson, a ship steward. She graduated from Booker T. Washington High school in Norfolk in 1941 and received her B.S. degree in Home Economics from Bennett College in Greensboro, North Carolina, in 1945. Payton remained close to Bennett College, establishing a scholarship fund there in the late 1990s.

Payton then attended the University of Wisconsin where her tuition and other expenses were paid by the state of Virginia as part of the state’s policy of sending black graduate students to out-of-state institutions rather than allowing them to received advanced degrees at the state’s universities. Payton received her Master’s in Psychology from Wisconsin in 1948.

After graduation, Payton took positions as a psychologist at Livingston College in Salisbury, North Carolina, and as psychology instructor at Elizabeth City State Teachers College in Elizabeth City, North Carolina, where she also served as dean of women. She joined the faculty of Howard University in Washington, D.C., after completing coursework for her PhD at Columbia University in 1959. She received her PhD from Columbia in 1962.

Dr. Payton first came to work for the Peace Corps in 1964. In 1966 she was named country director for the Eastern Caribbean, stationed in Barbados, serving in this position until 1970. In 1977 President Jimmy Carter appointed her director for the entire agency. She served only thirteen months, however, and was forced to resign because her views on the importance of the Peace Corps mission, its implementation strategies, and volunteers being nonpolitical were diametrically opposed to the then-director of action, Sam Brown.

Payton is best known, however, for her career contribution as the director of the Howard