Explainer: What Will Judge Chu Weigh In Sentencing Kim Potter?

Johnson, Jack (1878-1946)

Jack Johnson, the first African American and first Texan to win the heavyweight boxing championship of the world, was born the second of six children to Henry and Tiny Johnson in Galveston on March 31, 1878. His parents were former slaves. To help support his family, Jack Johnson left school in

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Source: Black Past

Lewis, Delano Eugene (1938 - )

On November 16, 1999 President William Jefferson (Bill) Clinton nominated Delano Eugene Lewis to be the United States Ambassador to South Africa. Lewis was confirmed by the U.S. Senate and served in that capacity from 1999 to 2001. Having spent much of his adult life to that point as an attorney

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Source: Black Past

Nov

16

1999

Kofi Annan

Annan attended Macalaster College in St. Paul, Minnesota, graduating in 1961… He was a fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Sloan School of Management in 1971-72, receiving a Master of Science degree… His wife Nane Annan, a lawyer and artist, is from Sweden… Previous

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Source: Fact Monster - Black History

(1995) William Jefferson Clinton, “the Job of Ending Discrimination in This Counrt is Not Over”

In July 1995, President Bill Clinton delivered a major speech at the White House in defense of Affirmative Action programs across the nation at a time when many critics were calling for their repeal. He argued that such programs were still needed in a talk he officially titled, The Job of Ending

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Source: Black Past

Smith, Barbara (1946- )

Beginning in the 1970s, Barbara Smith broke new ground as a black feminist, lesbian, activist, author, and book publisher of women of color. She and her twin sister, Beverly Smith, were born on December 16, 1946 in Cleveland, Ohio. Their mother, Hilda Smith, maternal grandmother, and a great aunt

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Source: Black Past

Dec

16

1946

Wright, Jonathan J. (1840-1885)

Jonathan Jasper Wright, the first African American to serve on a state Supreme Court, was born in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania and grew up in nearby Susquehanna County in the northeastern corner of the state. In 1858, Wright traveled to Ithaca, New York where he enrolled in the Lancasterian

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Source: Black Past

Macon B. Allen

Macon B. Allen, first African American admitted to the bar in Massachusetts ; the previous year he was admitted to the bar in Maine making him the first licensed African American attorney in the U.S.A.

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Source: Blackfacts.com

May

2

1845

Burris, Roland (1937- )

On January 15, 2009 Roland Wallace Burris was sworn in as the U.S. Senator from Illinois. Burriss appointment made him the third African American U.S. Senator from the state and the sixth black U.S. Senator in the history of the United States. The appointment, however, was marred by controversy

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Source: Black Past

Jan

15

2009

South Africa

South Africa, on the continents southern tip, is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean on the west and by the Indian Ocean on the south and east. Its neighbors are Namibia in the northwest, Zimbabwe and Botswana in the north, and Mozambique and Swaziland in the northeast. The kingdom of Lesotho forms an

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Source: Fact Monster - Black History

From Slave to Litigant: African Americans in Court in the Post-Civil War South

In the following article Melissa Milewski, a graduate student in history at New York University, describes her research which has uncovered the surprising success of African American litigants in court cases in the post-Civil War

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Source: Black Past

Jan

1

1854

Eure Sr., Dexter Dillard (1924-2015)

Dexter Dillard Eure Sr., pioneering black newspaper columnist for the Boston Globe, was born in Suffolk, Virginia, an only child to Luke Eure and Sarah Sharpe. His father left the family when he was an infant and his mother died when he was 12. Eure spent the rest of his young life going back and

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Source: Black Past

Jul

2

2015

Arthur Allen Fletcher, “The Father of Affirmative Action”

Arthur Allen Fletcher is known to many as the father of affirmative action. In the following account historian David Hamilton Golland describes the career of Fletcher, a Republican civil rights activist during the last half of the 20th

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Source: Black Past

Kirby Puckett

Kirby Puckett was a professional baseball player for the Minnesota Twins of the Major Baseball League. He was born on March 14, 1960 in Chicago, Illinois and raised in a public housing project in Chicago. He attended and graduated from Calumet High School, where he played baseball. Due to his short

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Source: Black History Resources

Mar

14

1960

Foxx, Anthony Renard (1971- )

Anthony Foxx, the seventeenth United States Secretary of Transportation, was born April 30, 1971 in Charlotte, North Carolina, and raised by his mother, Laura Foxx, and grandparents James and Mary Foxx. He graduated from West Charlotte High School in 1989, and four years later received

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Source: Black Past

Jul

2

2013

(1993) William J. Clinton, “The Freedom to Die"

On November 13, 1993, President Bill Clinton traveled to Memphis to address 5,000 African American ministers at the national headquarters of the Church of God in Christ. Speaking from the pulpit where in 1968 Dr. Martin Luther King delivered his last sermon, Clinton used the occasion to urge the

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Source: Black Past

Nov

13

1993

Parker, Darryl - Legal Advisor

Darryl Parker is an employment, civil rights, and personal injury attorney with the Civil Rights Justice Center PLLC in Seattle, Washington. He received his B.A. in Political Science from Fordham University and his J.D. from the University of California at Berkeley. He has considerable trial and

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Source: Black Past

Marvin Gaye

Marvin Pentz Gaye Jr. was a legendary singer and recording artist who came to be known as the “Prince of Soul”. Gaye was born on April 2, 1939 in Washington, D.C. He was raised by his father “Reverend Marvin Gay Sr.” who was a very strict guardian. Gaye was musically

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Source: Black History Resources

Apr

2

1939

Central Contractors Association

In 1969, Walter Hundley, director of the Seattle Model Cities Program, encouraged local black independent contractors to organize in an effort to gain lucrative building construction contracts that required minority participation. When the contractors responded, they selected Tyree Scott, an

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Source: Black Past

"Yes We Can": Barack Obama's Road to the White House, 2008

Barack Obamas campaign for the Presidency in 2008 has been described by many political analysts as brilliant and virtually flawless. Despite his inexperience in national politics and limited experience in state politics (Obama was first elected to political office in 1994), he assembled

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Source: Black Past

Nicomedes Santa Cruz: A Black Public Intellectual in Twentieth-Century Peru

In the following article University of Oregon historian Carlos Aguirre describes the self-taught poet, writer, and folklorist Nicomedes Santa Cruz, one of the understudied black intellectual leaders in Peru and Latin

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Source: Black Past

Feb

5

1992

Elijah Muhammad

Elijah Muhammad was an African American religious leader of the Nation of Islam, a religious movement based on the principles of Islam, focused specifically on black Muslims. His birth name was Elijah Robert Poole and he was the seventh of thirteen children born to William and Mariah Poole. His

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Source: Black History Resources

Feb

25

1975

Fred Jones

Fred McKinley Jones is certainly one of the most important Black inventors ever based on the sheer number of inventions he formulated as well as their

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Source: Black History Resources

Dawson, Daisy Lee Tibbs (1924-2013)

When the principal, J.T. Wright and his wife, a white couple who served as mentors to Tibbs, accepted a position at the University of Washington (UW), they convinced her to move to Seattle with them in 1944 to continue her education. As a student at the University of Washington Tibbs met Akiko

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Source: Black Past

Apr

24

1942

Ailey, Alvin (1931-1989)

Alvin Ailey was born in Rodgers, Texas during the Great Depression. He overcame racism, poverty, and homophobia to become one of the most celebrated choreographers in American history. His single teenage mother Lula Ailey washed clothes, picked cotton, and worked in domestic service in various

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Source: Black Past

Thomas Jennings

Thomas Jennings stands in history as a noteworthy figure for being the first Black person to ever receive a patent, but his life should serve as an example of what was, and what could have been, for Black people in the earliest years of the United

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Source: Black History Resources

Nov

26

2012

Pilgrim Baptist Church, Saint Paul, Minnesota (1863- )

Pilgrim Baptist Church in Saint Paul, Minnesota, is the oldest African American church in the state of Minnesota. A group of escaped slaves began worshiping together in 1863, and under the leadership of fellow escaped slave Robert Thomas Hickman, the church officially became Pilgrim Baptist Church

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Source: Black Past

Nov

15

1866

Race, Family, and Real Estate: Beryl Satter's Family Properties

In her new book, Family Properties: Race, Real Estate, and the Exploitation of Black Urban America, historian Beryl Satter puts a human face on the often told story of racial discrimination in urban housing by following the career of her father, Chicago attorney Mark J. Satter, who was both an

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Source: Black Past

Adams, John Quincy ["J. Q."] (1848-1922)

Educator, newspaper publisher and politician John Quincy Adams is best known as the editor of the Western Appeal/The Appeal of St. Paul, Minnesota. He held the position from 1886 to

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Source: Black Past

Pacific Bound: California’s 1852 Fugitive Slave Law

In 1852, California legislators passed a harsh fugitive slave law that condemned dozens of African American migrants to deportation and lifelong slavery. Historian Stacey L. Smith examines the legal travails of three accused fugitive slaves to illuminate the social relations of slavery in gold rush

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Source: Black Past

Apr

15

1852

The Harlem Renaissance in the American West

In the following article historians Bruce Glasrud and Cary Wintz discuss their new book, The Harlem Renaissance in the American West which argues that the literary and artistic outpouring by African Americans during the third decade of the 20th Century was a national phenomenon which included the

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Source: Black Past

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