For the Week of August 14-20
August 14
1862—President Abraham Lincoln (for the first time) meets with a group of prominent Blacks to discuss the Civil War and public policy. But before the meeting was over, he would anger those gathered. Although an outspoken opponent of the expansion of slavery, Lincoln suggested that it would be best for America and Blacks if African-Americans were to emigrate to Africa or Central America. Nevertheless, a little over a month later on Sept. 22 he would issue the Emancipation Proclamation technically freeing all slaves in the rebellious Southern states.
1883—Ernest E. Just is born in Charleston, S.C. Just would become one of the nation’s most prominent biologists conducting pioneering research in cell division. He graduated Magna Cum Laude from Dartmouth University in 1907 and would go on to establish the Zoology Department at Howard University in Washington, D.C. Just would die in 1941.
1959—Modern basketball legend Earvin “Magic” Johnson is born on this day in Lansing, Mich.
August 15
1975—In another of those highly publicized “trials of the century,” which frequently grip national attention, 20-year-old Joann Little is found not guilty of murder after she stabbed a White jailer who had entered her cell in Beaufort County, N.C., to sexually assault her. The trial had been moved to Raleigh because of widespread racial prejudice in the Eastern North Carolina area where the incident actually took place.
1979—President Jimmy Carter forces the resignation of United Nations Ambassador Andrew Young after he angered Jewish groups by meeting with representatives of the Palestine Liberation Organization. The resignation created stormy relations between Blacks and the generally uncompromising pro-Israel lobby in the United States.
August 16
August 17
August 18
1963—The first Black person admitted to the University of Mississippi, James Meredith, graduates on this day in 1963. His graduation was unmarred by the protests and violence which marked his federally forced entry into the once segregated institution.
1964—White-ruled South Africa is officially banned from competing in the Olympics because of its system of racial oppression known as Apartheid. The country’s Black majority would not achieve democratic rule, however, until May 1994 when the Nelson Mandela-led African National Congress won over two-thirds of the vote in the country’s first free elections.
August 19
1954—African-American diplomat Ralph Bunch is named Undersecretary of the United Nations. Bunch had already received the Nobel Peace Prize (1950) for his work as a UN negotiator during the Arab-Israeli war of 1948-1949. Bunch would later become UN Secretary General. He was born in Detroit but raised in Los Angeles.
August 20
1830—The first National Negro Convention is held. It takes place in Philadelphia and is chaired by Richard Allen, founder of the African Methodist Episcopal Church. Top on the agenda of the gathering was what could free Blacks do to help bring an end to slavery.
1942—Musician, composer, singer, songwriter Isaac Hayes is born on this day in Covington, Tenn.
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