*               Today in Black History - April 9                *

1816 - The African Methodist Episcopal Church is organized at a general
	convention in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

1865 - Nine African American regiments of Gen. John Hawkins's division
	help to smash the Confederate defenses at Fort Blakely, Alabama.
	Capture of the fort will lead to the fall of Mobile. The 68th
	U.S. Colored Troops will have the highest number of casualties
	in the engagement.

1865 - Robert E. Lee surrenders Army of Northern Virginia to Grant at 
	Appomattox Court House, Virginia, ending the Civil War.
	AFRICAN AMERICANS IN THE CONFEDERACY: The Confederacy is the 
	first to recognize that African Americans are major factors in 
	the war. The South impresses slaves to work in mines, repair 
	railroads and build fortifications, thereby releasing a 
	disproportionately large percentage of able-bodied whites for 
	direct war service.  A handful of African Americans enlisted in 
	the rebel army, but few, if any, fired guns in anger. A regiment 
	of fourteen hundred free African Americans received official 
	recognition in New Orleans, but was not called into service. It 
	later became, by a strange mutation of history, the first 
	African American regiment officially recognized by the Union 
	army.
	AFRICAN AMERICANS IN THE UNION NAVY: One out of every four Union
	sailors was an African American.  Of the 118,044 sailors in the 
	Union Navy, 29,511 were African Americans.  At least four 
	African American sailors won Congressional Medals of Honor.
	AFRICAN AMERICANS IN THE UNION ARMY: The 185,000 Black soldiers 
	in the Union army were organized into 166 all Black regiments 
	(145 infantry, 7 cavalry, 12 heavy artillery, 1 light artillery, 
	1 engineer). The largest number of African American soldiers 
	came from Louisiana (24,052), followed by Kentucky (23,703) 
	and Tennessee (20,133).  Pennsylvania contributed more African
	American soldiers than any other Northern state (8,612). African
	American soldiers participated in 449 battles, 39 of them major 
	engagements.  Sixteen Black soldiers received Congressional 
	Medals of Honor for gallantry in action.  Some 37,638 African
	American soldiers lost their lives during the war. African
	American soldiers generally received poor equipment and were 
	forced to do a large amount of fatigue duty.  Until 1864, 
	African American soldiers (from private to chaplain) received 
	seven dollars a month whereas white soldiers received from 
	thirteen to one hundred dollars a month. In 1863 African American
	units, with four exceptions (Fifth Massachusetts Cavalry, Fifty-
	fourth and Fifty-fifth Massachusetts Volunteers and Twenty-ninth 
	Connecticut Volunteers), were officially designated United States 
	Colored Troops (USCT). Since the War Department discouraged 
	applications from African Americans, there were few commissioned 
	officers. The highest ranking of the seventy-five to one hundred 
	African American officers was Lt. Col. Alexander T. Augustana, a 
	surgeon.  Some 200,000 African American civilians were employed 
	by the Union army as laborers, cooks, teamsters and servants.

1866 - The Civil Rights Bill of 1866 is passed over the president's
	veto. The bill will confer citizenship on African Americans and
	give them "the same right, in every State and Territory... as is
	enjoyed by white citizens."

1870 - The American Anti-Slavery Society is dissolved.

1898 - Paul Leroy Robeson is born in Princeton, New Jersey. The son of
	an ex-slave turned Methodist minister, Robeson will attend
	Rutgers University on a full scholarship, where he will excel 
	and obtain 12 letters in four sports, be named to the 
	All-American football team twice, be a member of the debate 
	team, and earn a Phi Beta Kappa key.  He will study law at 
	Columbia University in New York and receive his degree in 1923.
	There he will meet and marry Eslanda Cardozo Goode, who will be
	the first African American woman to head a pathology laboratory.
	He will work as a law clerk in New York, but once again will 
	face discrimination and leave the practice when a white secretary
	refuses to take dictation from him.  He will later become one of 
	America's foremost actors and singers.  He will make 14 films 
	including "The Emperor Jones," "King Solomon's Mines," and 
	"Showboat." During the 1940's he will continue to have success on 
	the stage, in film, and in concert halls, but will remain face to 
	face with prejudice and racism.  After finding the Soviet Union 
	to be a tolerant and friendly nation, he will begin to protest 
	the growing Cold War hostilities between the United States and 
	the USSR.  He will question why African Americans should support 
	a government that did not treat them as equals.  At a time when 
	dissent was hardly tolerated, Robeson will be looked upon as an 
	enemy by his government.  In 1947, he will be named by the House 
	Committee on Un-American Activities, and the State Department will
	deny him a passport until 1958.  Events such as these, along with 
	a negative public response, will lead to the demise of his public 
	career. He will be an inspiration to millions around the world.  
	His courageous stance against oppression and inequality in part 
	will lead to the civil rights movement of the 1960s. He will join
	the ancestors on January 23, 1976, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 
	after living in seclusion for ten years.

1929 - Valenza Pauline Burke is born in Brooklyn, New York to parents 
	who had immigrated to the United States from Barbados.  She 
	will become a novelist known as Paule Marshall.  She will author 
	"Browngirl, Brownstones," "Praisesong for the Widow," "The Chosen 
	Place, The Timeless People," "Soul Clap Hands and Sing," and 
	Daughters."  She will also write a collection of short stories, 
	"Reena and Other Stories."  

1939 - When she is refused admission to the Daughters of the American
	Revolution's Constitution Hall to give a planned concert, Marian 
	Anderson performs for 75,000 on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.
	Two months later, she will be honored with the NAACP's Spingarn 
	Medal for her talents as "one of the greatest singers of our time"
	and for "her magnificent dignity as a human being."

1950 - Juanita Hall becomes the first African American to win a Tony
	award for her role as Bloody Mary in the musical "South Pacific."

1968 - Martin Luther King Jr. is buried, after funeral services at
	Ebenezer Baptist Church and memorial services at Morehouse
	College, in Atlanta, Georgia.  More than 300,000 persons march
	behind the coffin of the slain leader which is carried through
	the streets of Atlanta on a farm wagon pulled by two Georgia
	mules. Scores of national dignitaries, including Vice-President
	Hubert Humphrey, attend the funeral. CORE and the Fellowship of
	Reconciliation send twenty-three dignitaries.  Ralph David
	Abernathy is elected to succeed King as head of the Southern
	Christian Leadership Conference.

1993 - The Reverend Benjamin Chavis is chosen to head the NAACP, 
	succeeding Benjamin Hooks.

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