*               Today in Black History - May 17         *

1875 - The first Kentucky Derby is won by African American jockey Oliver
        Lewis riding a horse named Aristides.  Fourteen of the 15 jockeys in
        the race are African Americans.  The winning purse for the race is
        $ 2,850.  Lewis won the one and a half mile Run for the Roses in a
        time of 2 minutes, 37-3/4 seconds.

1881 - Frederick Douglass is appointed Recorder of Deeds for the District of
        Columbia.

1909 - White firemen on Georgia Railroad strike in protest of the employment
        of African American firemen.

1915 - The National Baptist Convention is chartered.

1942 - Henry St. Claire Fredericks is born in New York City.  He will become
        an entertainer and songwriter for film.  He also will be a singer of
        urban folk-blues, better known as Taj Mahal.  He will be one of the
        first American artists to blend blues and world music. For over three
        decades, Taj Mahal will teach generations the wonders of Robert
        Johnson, Sleepy John Estes, Muddy Waters and Jimmy Reed. With a
        catalogue of almost thirty albums (including some for children!), one
        can find film soundtracks ("Sounder," "Brothers"), music for
        television dramas ("The Tuskegee Project," "The Man Who Broke A
        Thousand Chains") as well as his best-loved classics like "Natch'l
        Blues."

1954 - The Supreme Court outlaws school segregation in Brown v. Board of
        Education.  The ruling is a major victory for the NAACP, led by
        Thurgood Marshall of the Legal Defense Fund, and other civil rights
        groups.

1956 - "Sugar" Ray Charles Leonard is born in Wilmington, South Carolina.
        Leonard will win the National Golden Gloves championship at 16, an
        Olympic gold medal in 1976, and have a successful professional boxing
        career, winning titles in both the welterweight and middleweight
        divisions.

1957 - The Prayer Pilgrimage, attracting a crowd of over 30,000, is held on
        the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC.  Timed to
        coincide with the third anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education,
        the pilgrimage is organized by Martin Luther King, Jr., the NAACP,
        and others to advocate greater voting and civil rights for African
        Americans.

1962 - Marshall Logan Scott is elected the first African American moderator
        of the Presyterian Church.

1969 - A commemorative stamp of W.C. Handy, "Father of the Blues," is issued
        by the U.S. Postal Service, making Handy the first African American
        blues musician honored on a postage stamp.

1969 - Rev. Thomas Kilgore, a Los Angeles pastor, is elected president of the
        predominantly white American Baptist Convention.

1970 - Hank Aaron becomes the ninth baseball player to get 3,000 hits.

1980 - A major race riot occurs in Miami, Florida.  Sixteen persons are
        killed and more than three hundred are injured.

1987 - The work of four contemporary African American artists - Sam Gilliam,
        Keith Morrison, William T. Williams, and Martha Jackson-Jarvis - is
        shown in the inaugural exhibition of the new Anacostia Museum in
        Washington, DC.

1987 - Eric "Sleepy" Floyd of the Golden State Warriors sets a playoff record
        for points in a single quarter.  He pours in 29 points in the fourth
        period in a game this night against Pat Riley's Los Angeles Lakers.

1997 - Laurent Kabilia becomes the new President of Zaire and renames it the
        Democratic Republic of the Congo.  The country had been previously
        under the 37 year rule of dictator Mobutu Sese Seko.

        *********************************************************
        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.
        *********************************************************

   ______________________________________________________________
           Munirah Chronicle is edited by Brother Mosi Hoj
   	          "The TRUTH shall make you free"

   E-mail:   <[log in to unmask]>
   Archives: <http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/archives/Munirah.html>
   ______________________________________________________________
   To SUBSCRIBE send E-mail to: <[log in to unmask]>
   In the E-mail body place:  Subscribe Munirah Your FULL Name
   ______________________________________________________________
   Munirah(TM) is a trademark of Information Man. Copyright 1998,
   All Rights Reserved by the Information Man in association with
   CODE One Communications.