* Today in Black History - August 7 *
1846 - Frederick Douglass is speaker at the World's Temperance
convention in London, England.
1904 - Ralph Johnson Bunche is born in Detroit, Michigan. A political
social scientist, he will achieve fame as the first African
American Nobel Prize winner (1950) for his role as U.N.
mediator of the armistice agreements between Israel and her
Arab neighbors in the Middle East wars of 1948, for which he
will be awarded the NAACP's Spingarn Medal (1949). He will
serve as the undersecretary of the United Nations from 1955
to his death in 1971.
1932 - Abebe Bikila of Ethiopia becomes the first man to win the Olympic
marathon twice (running barefoot).
1936 - Rahsaan Roland Kirk is born in Columbus, Ohio. Blind from the
age of two, he will begin playing the tenor saxophone
professionally in Rhythm & Blues bands before turning to jazz.
He will be best known for his ability to play more than one
instrument at once, his self-made jazz instruments, and for his
creative improvisational skills. Rahsaan will also become an
activist in getting support for what he will term "Black
Classical Music." He will participate in several takeovers of
television talk shows during which he would demand more exposure
for black jazz artists.
1945 - Alan Page, who will be a 6-time NFL All Pro, Professional
Football Hall of Famer, 1971 NFL Player of the Year, and
Minnesota State Supreme Court justice(elected 1992), is born in
Canton, Ohio.
1946 - First coin bearing portrait of an African American is authorized.
1948 - Alice Coachman becomes the first woman (and first African
American woman) to win an Olympic gold medal in Track and Field
competition (the high jump) during the Summer Games in London.
She also will be the only American woman to win a track event
that year. She will later become inducted into the National
Track and Field Hall of Fame.
1954 - Charles H. Mahoney is confirmed by the Senate and becomes the
first African American to serve as a full-time delegate to the
United Nations.
1960 - African American and white students stage kneel-in
demonstrations in Atlanta churches.
1966 - A race riot starts in Lansing, Michigan.
1970 - Four persons, including the presiding judge, are killed in
courthouse shoot-out in San Rafael, Marin County, California.
Police charge that activist Angela Davis helped provide the
weapons used by the convicts and issued a nationwide warrant
for her arrest.
1989 - Congressman George Thomas "Mickey" Leland, members of his staff
and State Department officials die in a plane crash in the
mountains near Gambela, Ethiopia. Leland, the Democratic
successor to Barbara Jordan, had established the Select
Committee on Hunger in 1984 and was chairman of the
Congressional Black Caucus during the 99th Congress. A
successful campaigner for stronger sanctions against South
Africa, Leland was on a visit to a United Nations refugee camp
at the time of his death.
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The source for these facts are "Encyclopedia Britannica,
"InfoBeat," "I, Too, Sing America - The African American
Book of Days," "Before the Mayflower", "Black Firsts" and
independent research by the Information Man.
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