*                   Today in Black History - June 21                    *

1821 - The African Methodist Episcopal Zion (AMEZ) Church is formally
        constituted in New York City at its first annual conference.
        Nineteen clergymen were present, representing six African American
        churches from New York City, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania,  New Haven,
        Connecticut and Newark, New Jersey.  They voted to separate from
        the white-controlled Methodist Episcopal Church, which had insisted
        on ultimate control of the church's leadership and property.
        To distinguish between the two African Methodist Episcopal
        organizations, as well as to honor their original congregation, in
        1848 they will vote to add Zion to their name.

1832 - Joseph Haynes Rainey is born in Georgetown, South Carolina.  He
        will become the first African American elected to the U.S. House
        of Representatives, where he will serve five terms.

1859 - Henry Ossawa Tanner is born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.  Son of
        AME bishop Benjamin Tanner, young Tanner will forgo the ministry
        to take up painting.  Constantly facing the tension between
        racial stereotypes and and his art, Tanner will eventually
        emigrate to France to pursue his art, considered by many the
        finest produced by an African American.  He will be known for his
        commanding use of light and color in his seascapes, scenes of
        everyday life, and religious paintings.

1868 - John Hope is born in Augusta, Georgia.  He will become the first
        African American president of Atlanta Baptist (later Morehouse)
        College. president in 1906. A pioneer in the field of education, he
        was the College's first African-American president. Hope, a Phi Beta
        Kappa graduate of Brown University, encourages an intellectual
        climate comparable to what he had known at his alma mater and openly
        challenges Booker T. Washington's view that education for African
        Americans should emphasize vocational and agricultural skills. He will
        join the ancestors in 1936.

1923 - Marcus Garvey is sentenced by the U.S. government to 5 years in prison
        for using the U.S. mail to defraud.  He is railroaded by a government
        that is terrified by the control that one magnificent orator had over
        African Americans.  They did not want their major source of cheap
        labor in America to leave for Africa.

1927 - Carl B. Stokes, the first African American elected mayor of a major
        American city is born.   Stokes will be elected to two terms as mayor
        of Cleveland, Ohio at a time of urban riots and racial unrest in many
        major U.S. cities.  Civil rights leaders said his election was an
        advance, both symbolic and genuine, for the cause of black political
        empowerment.  He is instrumental in getting through a law requiring
        city contractors to have minority employment programs.  President
        Clinton will appoint him, in 1994, as ambassador to the Seychelles,
        an island nation in the Indian Ocean. He will join the ancestors in
        1996.

1945 - Colonel Benjamin O. Davis, Jr. becomes the first African American
        to command a U.S. Army Air Force base when he takes command of the
        477th Composite Group of Godman Field in Kentucky.

1951 - PFC William H. Thompson is posthumously awarded the Congressional
        Medal of Honor.  He is the first African American recipient since
        the Spanish-American War.

1964 - One African American and two white civil rights workers - James E.
        Chaney, Michael H. Schwerner,  and Andrew Goodman - disappear after
        release from a jail near Philadelphia, Mississippi.  They are later
        found murdered.

1965 - Arthur Ashe leads UCLA to the NCAA tennis championship.

1990 - Little Richard gets a star on Hollywood's Walk of Fame.

1997 - Patrice Rushen receives an NAACP Lifetime Achievement Award for her
        contributions in the field of music.

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