*                 Today in Black History - February 29              *

1892 - Augusta Savage is born in Green Springs, Florida. She will become 
        a sculptor, teacher, and one of the most influential forces among
        Harlem Renaissance artists.

1940 - Robert Sengstacke Abbott, newspaper editor and publisher of the 
        Chicago Defender, joins the ancestors in Chicago, Illinois.  His 
        newspaper became a bold voice for African Americans in the North, 
        advocating during the wave of lynchings after World War I the 
        slogan, "if you must die, take at least one with you," later 
        simplified to "an eye for an eye." Abbott passes away as his 
        nephew, John Sengstacke, is establishing the National Newspaper 
        Publishers Association in Washington, DC.

1940 - In Hollywood, Hattie McDaniel receives an Academy Award for best 
        supporting actress for her role in "Gone With the Wind." She is 
        the first African American to win an Oscar.  Often criticized
        for her portrayal of maids, she will say, "It's much better to 
        play a maid than to be one.  The only choice permitted me is 
        either to be a servant for $7 a week or portray one for $700 a 
        week."
 
1968 - The National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, convened by 
        President Lyndon B. Johnson after riots occur in major cities 
        throughout the United States, issues its report.  The commission
        will be called the "Kerner Commission" after its chairman, Governor
        Otto Kerner of Illinois.  The report concludes that white racism is
        one of the fundamental causes of riots in the United States.  It 
        also cited what was need to avert future violence -- jobs, open
        housing laws and the elimination of defacto school segregation.
        It also concluded the United States was "headed toward two 
        societies, one Black and one White -- separate and unequal."
        A 30-year update of the Kerner Commission reports "the divide
        between rich and poor has become greater in the United States and
        the challenges from within more formidable."

1988 - South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu and other religious leaders 
        are arrested while kneeling near Parliament with a petition against 
        government bans on anti-apartheid groups.

1996 - Daniel Green is convicted in Lumberton, North Carolina, of murdering 
        James R. Jordan, the father of basketball star Michael Jordan, 
        during a 1993 roadside holdup. (Green will be sentenced to life in
        prison; an accomplice who had testified against him, Larry Demery, 
        also will receive a life sentence.)

2004 - President Jean-Bertrand Aristide leaves Haiti, bowing to pressure 
        from a rebellion at home and governments abroad. The administration 
        of U.S president George W. Bush says it welcomes Aristide's 
        departure and that it was in the best interests of Haiti. Aristide, 
        Haiti's first democratically elected president in 200 years of 
        independence, flies to the Dominican Republic and seeks asylum in 
        Morocco, Taiwan or Panama.

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