*                 Today in Black History - January 2                 *

1800 - Members of the Free Black Commission of Philadelphia petitions
        Congress to abolish slavery.

1831 - The "Liberator" is published for the first time.  An abolitionist
        newspaper, it is started by William Lloyd Garrison.

1837 - The first National Negro Congress is held in Washington, DC.

1872 - The Mississippi legislature meets and elects John R. Lynch as the
        Speaker of the House, at the age of twenty-four.

1898 - Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander is born in Philadelphia,
        Pennsylvania.  She will become the first African American to
        earn a Ph.D. in economics.

1903 - President Theodore Roosevelt shuts down the U.S. Post Office in
        Indianola, Mississippi, for refusing to accept its appointed
        postmistress because she is an African American.

1915 - John Hope Franklin is born in Rentlesville, Oklahoma.  He will
        become a scholar and historian most famous for his book "From
        Slavery to Freedom: A History of Negro Americans," which will
        sell over two million copies.

1947 - Calvin Hill is born.  He will become a professional football
        player with the Dallas Cowboys (running back) and will play in
        Super Bowl V and VI.

1957 - Sugar Ray Robinson is defeated by Gene Fullmer for the world
        middleweight boxing title.

1963 - Bobby "Blue" Bland's "That's The Way Love Is" is released by
        Duke Records.

1965 - The Selma, Alabama voter registration drive begins, led by the
        Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.  It is a major effort to get
        African American voters registered to vote in Alabama.

1970 - Clifton Reginald Wharton, Jr. becomes the first African American
        president of Michigan State University and the first African
        American president of a major American university in the twentieth
        century.

1970 - Dr. Benjamin E. Mays is named the first African American president
        of the Atlanta, Georgia Board of Education.

1977 - Erroll Garner, pianist and composer, joins the ancestors in Los
        Angeles, California.  He was considered the best-selling jazz
        pianist in the world, most famous for the jazz standard "Misty."

1977 - Ellis Wilson, the artist, joins the ancestors.   An artist known for
        his striking paintings of African Americans, his work had been
        exhibited at the New York World's Fair of 1939, the Harmon
        Foundation, and the Detroit Institute of Arts.  Among his best-known
        works are "Funeral Procession," "Field Workers," and "To Market."

1980 - Larry Williams, rhythm and blues singer best known for "Bony
Maronie"),
        joins the ancestors after being found dead with a gunshot wound to the
        head at the age of 45.

1981 - David Lynch, singer with The Platters, joins the ancestors at the age
        of 76.

1984 - W. Wilson Goode, the son of a sharecropper, is sworn in as the
        first African American mayor of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

1991 - Sharon Pratt Dixon was sworn in as mayor of Washington, DC, becoming
        the first African American woman to head a city of Washington's
        size and prominence.

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