Black History Month
Jackie Robinson
• Born January 31, 1919, he was a baseball player who became
the first African-American to play in Major League Baseball
(MLB) in the modern age. Over 10 seasons, Robinson played in
six World Series and contributed to the Dodgers' 1955 World
Championship. He was selected for six consecutive All-Star
Games, from 1949 to 1954 and was the winner of the first MLB
Rookie of the Year Award in 1947. He also won the National
League Most Valuable Player Award in 1949 — the first black
player. He was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1962.
On April 15, 2004, Major League Baseball has adopted a new
annual tradition, "Jackie Robinson Day", on which every player
on every team wears #42. He died on October 24, 1972 from a
heart attack.
Black History Month
Marvin Gaye
Born on April 2, 1939 in Washington D.C. Marvin
Gaye was an American singer, songwriter and
instrumentalist. Stared in the group the Moonglows. He
had over 40 top 40 hit songs as a solo artist including
“Ain’t no mountain high enough.”
He won 2 Grammy award in 1983. He was killed
by his father on April 1, 1984. He was posthumously
inducted to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1987.
Black History Month
Oprah Winfrey
• Born January 29, 1954, she is an American television
presenter, actress, producer and publisher. Her
internationally-syndicated talk show The Oprah
Winfrey Show, has earned her multiple Emmy Awards
and is the highest-rated talk show in history. She has
been ranked the richest African-American of the 20th
century. In 2013, she was awarded the Presidential
Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama and an
honorary doctorate degree from Harvard.
Black History Month
Booker T. Washington
Born April 5, 1856, he was a slave who worked on a plantation in
Virginia before the Civil War. After he was freed, he walked 500
miles to attend college. Later, he opened a school for African
American children in Tuskegee, Alabama. He wrote several books
about the importance of hard work and financial independence for
African Americans.
In 1901 President Theodore Roosevelt invited Booker T.
Washington to the White House, making him the first African
American to be so honored. He remained the President of Tuskegee
University until his death on November 14, 1915. He is remembered
as one of the foremost African-American leaders of the late 19th and
early 20th centuries.
Black History Month
Thurgood Marshall
Thurgood Marshall (July 2, 1908– January 24, 1993)
was an American jurist and the first African American to serve on
the Supreme Court of the United States. Before becoming a
judge, he was a lawyer who was best remembered for his high
success rate in arguing before the Supreme Court and for the
victory in Brown v. Board of Education. He was nominated to the
court by President Lyndon Johnson in 1967.
His most famous case as a lawyer was Brown v. Board of
Education of Topeka, (1954), the case in which the Supreme
Court ruled that "separate but equal" public education was
unconstitutional because it could never be truly equal. In total,
Marshall won 29 out of the 32 cases he argued before the
Supreme Court.
Black History Month
Julius Erving
Born February 22, 1950- Raised in Roosevelt,
New York, commonly known by the nickname Dr. J, is
a retired American basketball player who helped start a
modern style of play that emphasizes leaping and play
above the rim.
Erving won three championships, four Most
Valuable Player Awards, and three scoring titles while
playing with the ABA's Virginia Squires and New York
Nets and the NBA's Philadelphia 76ers.
Black History Month
Maya Angelou
Born on April 4, 1928, in St. Louis, Missouri, Maya Angelou was a
writer, actress, poet, dancer, and civil rights activist. She is remembered for
her 1969 memoir, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, which made history as
the first nonfiction best-seller by an African-American woman. She later
wrote the poem "On the Pulse of Morning"—one of her most famous
works—which she recited at President Bill Clinton's inauguration in 1993.
Angelou received several honors throughout her career, including two
NAACP Image Awards in the outstanding literary work (nonfiction) category,
in 2005 and 2009. She died on May 28, 2014.
Black History Month
Nat King Cole
Nathaniel Adams Coles born March 17, 1919 in
Montgomery, Alabama. He was known as Nat King Cole, Over
the course of his career, Cole appeared on numerous television
shows and in several films. He was an American singer who
became famous as a leading jazz pianist as well as for his soft,
baritone voice, which he used to perform in big band and jazz
genres.
He was the first African American to host a television
variety show and has maintained worldwide popularity over 40
years past his death. In December 1964, Cole was diagnosed with
lung cancer. Nat “King” Cole died on February 15, 1965. He was
45 years old.
Black History Month
Ruby Bridges Hall
Ruby Bridges was born in Tylertown, Mississippi in 1954. Ruby Bridges was
the first African-American child to attend an all-white public elementary
school in the American South. Ruby would be the only African-American
student to attend the William Frantz School, near her home, and the first black
child to attend an all-white elementary school in the South. Only one person
agreed to teach Ruby and that was Barbara Henry, from Boston,
Massachusetts, and for over a year Henry taught her alone, "as if she were
teaching a whole class."
That first day, Bridges and her adult companions spent the entire day in the
principal's office; the chaos of the school prevented their moving to the
classroom until the second day. Bridges, now Ruby Bridges Hall, still lives in
New Orleans with her husband, Malcolm Hall, and their four sons For 15
years Hall worked as a travel agent, later becoming a full-time parent.
Black History Month
Jessie Owens
James Cleveland "Jesse" Owens (September 12, 1913 – March
31, 1980) was an American track and field athlete who specialized in
the sprints and the long jump. He participated in
the 1936SummerOlympics in Berlin, Germany, where he achieved
international fame by winning four gold medals: one each in the 100
meters, the 200 meters, the long jump, and as part of the 4x100 meter
relay team. He was the most successful athlete at the 1936 Summer
Olympics.
The Jesse Owens Award, USA Track and Field's highest accolade
for the year's best track and field athlete, is named after him, in honor of
his significant career.
Black History Month
Muhammad Ali
Muhammad Ali (born Cassius Marcellus Clay, Jr.; January 17,
1942) is an African American former professional boxer, considered
among the greatest heavyweights in the sport's history.
Ali is today widely regarded for not only the skills he displayed in
the ring but also the values he exemplified outside of it: religious
freedom, racial justice and the triumph of principle over expedience. He
is one of the most recognized sports figures of the past 100 years.
Black History Month
Hiram R. Revels
Born September 27, 1827 in North Carolina, Revels was a member of a
free family. He and his brother both apprenticed as barbers. In 1845, he was
ordained as a minister in the African Methodist Episcopal Church, working as a
preacher. Revels participated in the Civil War, organizing two black regiments
for the Union Army. He also fought for the Union at the Battle of Vicksburg.
In 1870, the Mississippi state congress selected Revels to fill a vacant
seat in the United States Senate. Revels became the first African American to
serve in the United States Senate (R). Revels died on January 16, 1901, while
attending a meeting of Methodist ministers in Aberdeen, Mississippi.
Black History Month
Tuskegee Airmen
The Tuskegee Airmen were determined young men who
volunteered to become America's first African American military
squadron during World War 2 (1941-1945). The Airmen’s
record included not losing a single bomber to enemy fire in
more than 200 combat missions.
The 332nd Fighter Group was awarded the Presidential
Unit Citation for its longest bomber escort mission to Berlin,
Germany, March 24, 1945. In 1948, President Harry Truman
enacted Executive Order No. 9981 - directing equality of
treatment and opportunity in all of the United States Armed
Forces, which in time led to the end of racial segregation in the
U.S. military forces.