* 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 until he joins the ancestors 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(selected 1992), is born in Canton, Ohio.
1946 - First coin bearing portrait of an African American (Booker T.
Washington) 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 racially motivated disturbance 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 will be sought for arrest and become one of the Federal Bureau of
Investigation's "most wanted criminals." She will be arrested in New
York City in October 1970, returned to California to face charges of
kidnapping, murder, and conspiracy and will be acquitted of all
charges by an all-white jury.
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 he
joins the ancestors.
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