Week of Jan. 15-21
January 15
1908—Alpha Kappa Alpha, the first Black Greek letter sorority, is founded on the campus of Howard University in Washington, D.C., by Ethel Hedgeman Lyle of St. Louis, Mo. The sorority gradually branched out to other campuses and became one of the leading organizational vehicles for college-trained Black women to make their mark on American society.
1929—Martin Luther King Jr., the man who was to become America’s greatest civil rights hero, was born on this day in 1929. Actually, his original given name was “Michael” but it was later changed to Martin. He first rose to national prominence as the country’s premier civil rights leader when he successfully led the 1955-1956 Montgomery, Ala., bus boycott by Blacks angered by the arrest of Rosa Parks for her refusal to give up her seat on a city bus to a White man. In 1957, King was elected to head the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, which became the leading organization of the civil rights era. Between 1957 and 1968, he traveled more than six million miles, gave more than 2,500 speeches, was arrested more than 20 times, and physically assaulted at least four times—all on behalf of civil rights for American Blacks. Perhaps his most famous speech was the “I Have A Dream” speech given before a crowd of 250,000 during the March on Washington Aug. 28, 1963. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964 and the nation now celebrates his birth as a national holiday on the third Monday of each January. But during his life, King also became the target of a massive FBI operation that some feel indirectly paved the way for his assassination in Memphis, Tenn., on April 4, 1968. During his “I Have A Dream” speech, King summarized the purpose of the march and the Civil Rights Movement: “But 100 years later, the Negro still is not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still languished in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land. And so we’ve come here today to dramatize a shameful condition.”
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