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Pace-setting Civil rights lawyer and Women’s rights activist Pauli Murray passed away in Pittsburgh, PA. She was also the first Black woman priest ordained by the Episcopal Church.

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Kenneth Gibson became the first black mayor of an Eastern city when he assumed the post in Newark, New Jersey in 1970.

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The largest single gift to date from a black organization was the $132,000 given by the Links, Inc., to the United Negro College Fund in 1974

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In 1873, Henry O. Flipper enrolled at West Point Military Academy.

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In 1889, Frederick Douglass was appointed as Minister to Haiti, the first and only nation in the world that overthrew slavery.

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Thomas Dorsey, the ‘Father’ of Gospel Music, was born this day in 1899.

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In 1863, the Dutch West Indies abolished slavery.

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Ghana, the first nation south of the Sahara to gain its independence, became a Republic. Legally, Ghana was totally free of any outside control.