RODNEY KING
March 3
1968—The infamous COINTELPRO memorandum is sent to FBI field offices around the country. COINTELPRO was a government counter-intelligence program aimed at disrupting and destroying Black, peace and anti-war groups. The March 3 memorandum specifically called on FBI agents to infiltrate militant Black organizations and employ various tactics to prevent them from growing individually or uniting with one another. The agents were also told to do whatever was necessary to prevent the rise of a “Black Messiah” who could “electrify and unify” Black people. Approximately one month after the COINTELPRO memorandum was issued, Civil Rights Movement leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in Memphis. When the documents were discovered by a reporter in the 1970s, suspicion increased that the FBI and its longtime Director J. Edgar Hoover were in some way involved with the killing of Dr. King.
1991—Motorist Rodney King is brutally beaten by a group of Los Angeles police officers. Unknown to them, the beating was caught on videotape. However, a year later (April 29, 1992) when a jury in Simi Valley, Calif., with no Blacks on it found four White officers not guilty of all charges related to the beating, riots erupted in Los Angeles, leaving millions of dollars in damage, nearly 50 people dead and more than 300 injured. Ultimately, two of the officers were convicted on federal civil rights charges and King received a financial settlement from the city of Los Angeles. It was during this period that King uttered his signature statement: “Why can’t we all just get along?”
March 4
1877—Inventor and scientist Garrett A. Morgan is born in Paris, Ky. Among his major inventions were the gas mask and the automatic traffic signal. He made history on July 25, 1916 when he used his gas mask to rescue 32 men trapped in a mine explosion beneath Lake Erie. The U.S. Army also used the gas mask to save lives during World War I. Morgan died in 1963.
1922—Comedic great Bert Williams dies of pneumonia in New York City at the age of 46. What Jackie Robinson did for Blacks by breaking the color barrier in Major League Baseball, Williams did on the American stage. He was a comic, singer, writer and producer who spent 10 of his 25 years in show business performing with the famous Ziegfield Follies. W.C. Fields once referred to him as “the funniest man I ever saw.”
Williams was born Egbert Austin Williams in the Bahamas.
March 5
1770—Crispus Attucks is shot and killed by British soldiers, becoming the first American to die in the struggle for American Independence from England. Attucks was an escaped slave who became a sailor and rope maker. It is unclear exactly how he became involved in the protest of that day. But a crowd had gathered and began to taunt British troops. Attucks, who was of Black and Indian parentage, was inspired to give a speech in which he spoke of the importance of freedom. Suddenly a volley of shots was fired into the crowd. Four people died that day in an event which became known as the Boston Massacre.
March 6
1857—Perhaps the most thoroughly racist decision ever rendered by a U.S. Supreme Court is released on this day—the Dred Scott decision. Scott and his wife, Harriet, had sued in St. Louis Circuit Court claiming they were free because their slave master had taken them from a slave state to the free territory of Missouri. However, in a majority opinion written by Chief Justice Roger B. Taney the court ruled: 1) Blacks, be they slave or free, were not and could not be U.S. citizens and thus were not entitled to file suit in U.S. courts, 2) Denied Congress the power to restrict slavery by declaring the 1820 Missouri Compromise unconstitutional, 3) Declared that where the Constitution said, “All men are created equal,” the phrase did not include Blacks, and 4) Told African Americans that they “had no rights the White man was bound to respect.” However, reflecting the law of unintended consequences, the Dred Scott decision was so harsh and so angered anti-slavery forces that it helped pave the way for the Civil War which ended all slavery in America.
1957—The West African nation of Ghana becomes independent from White colonial rule becoming the first British controlled colony to gain independence. The nation took its name from the ancient empire of Ghana. Its first president Dr. Kwame Nkrumah was elected on July 1, 1960. Nkrumah would go on to become a major force for African independence and Black rights worldwide. The Lincoln University graduate became a major advocate of international Black unity known as Pan-Africanism.
March 7
1539—This is probably the day Estevanico—the first Black conquistador—was killed. Estevanico, a Black Moor from Morocco, was sold as a servant when he was only 10 but became friends with his owner Andres de Dorantes and joined a 1527 expedition of 300 men from Spain looking for riches in what would later become the U.S. state of Florida. All but four members of the expedition were wiped out by the Indians they tried to conquer. Estevanico was among those who survived. He was held captive for five years but became a “medicine man” and learned the languages of various tribes. He eventually escaped and in February of 1539 led an expedition to Culiacan, Mexico looking for the fabled lost city of gold—El Dorado. It was doing this expedition that he was killed.
1965—On this day in Black history, the first leg of the Selma-to-Montgomery March is completed as thousands joined Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in protesting racial injustice in Alabama. An earlier attempt to complete the march had been disrupted by a police attack. The Alabama National Guard was federalized, and U.S. Army troops were called in to protect the marchers. It was shortly after this march that a White female supporter of the civil rights struggle, Viola Liuzzo, was shot and killed by Ku Klan Klan–style terrorists opposed to civil rights for Blacks.
1997—Former Jamaican Prime Minister Michael Manley dies. Manley is perhaps best known for his brand of democratic socialism and attempting to organize Caribbean and African nations into a bloc to press for better prices for their raw materials.
March 8
1977—Henry L. Marsh III is elected the first Black mayor of Richmond, Va. Before becoming mayor of the capital of the old confederacy, Marsh had made a name for himself confronting the city’s White power structure as a civil rights attorney. He also served in the state senate.
1993—Jazz great Billy Eckstine dies at 78 in Pittsburgh. Eckstine came to fame in the 1940s and 1950s as a singer and bandleader who worked with some of the greatest names of the era including Louis Armstrong and Lena Horne. He was one of the greatest influences upon modern jazz and B-bop. Among his best-known ballads were “Everything I Have Is Yours,” “Blue Moon,” “Caravan” and “That Old Black Magic.”
March 9
1841—The U.S. Supreme Court rules that Joseph Cinque and his fellow mutineers are free men. Along with several of his Mendi tribesmen, Cinque, son of an African king, had been captured and sold into slavery. But in 1839, he led a revolt on the Spanish slave ship Amistad, killed the captain and seized control of the ship. However, a U.S. military ship seized the Amistad off the coast of Long Island, N.Y. The seizure led to protracted court battles in which Cinque and his men were charged with murder. But in an unusual ruling for its day, the high court held, in effect, that the men had a human right to try to escape bondage and allowed them to return to Africa.
1871—Noted Black politician Oscar De Priest is born in Florence, Ala. After moving to Chicago, he becomes a major political force in the city serving on the board of commissioners and then on the city council (1915-1917). However, De Priest became a national political figure when he was elected to the U.S. Congress in 1928. Throughout his years of political service, he was known as “a persuasive agent for the Black masses.” Oscar Stanton De Priest died in 1951.
1931—Walter F. White is named executive secretary of the NAACP. The Atlanta-born White was arguably the most devoted and determined person ever to head the civil rights organization and was easily one of the top Black leaders of the first half of the 20th century. The light-complexioned and blue-eyed White also became a legend in 1919 when he “passed for White” in order to investigate a race riot in Elaine, Ark., which had left more than 100 Blacks dead. He barely escaped with his life when news leaked out as to who he was. A train conductor, thinking he was White, is said to have joked with him saying, “You’re leaving too early. The fun is about to start. The boys are going to lynch a yellow Nigger passing for White.”
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