* Today in Black History - March 17 * Once a year we go through the charade of February being Black History Month. Black History Month needs to be a 12-MONTH THING. When we all learn about our history, about how much weve accomplished while being handicapped with RACISM, it can only inspire us to greater heights, knowing were on the giant shoulders of our ANCESTORS. So Heres My Contribution... As It Is, It Shall Be....DAILY...... ****************************************************************** 1806 - Norbert Rillieux is born a free man in New Orleans, Louisiana. Rillieux will become best known for his revolutionary improvements in sugar refining methods. Awarded his second patent for an evaporator, the invention will be widely used throughout Louisiana and the West Indies, dramatically increasing and modernizing sugar production. 1865 - Aaron Anderson wins the Navys Medal of Honor for his heroic actions aboard the USS Wyandank during the Civil War. 1886 - A massacre occurs in Carrollton, Mississippi. Twenty African Americans are killed by white supremacists. 1891 - West Virginia State College is founded in Institute, West Virginia. 1896 - C.B. Scott receives a patent for the street sweeper. 1898 - Blanche Kelso Bruce joins the ancestors in Washington, DC at the age of 57. 1912 - Bayard Rustin is born in West Chester, Pennsylvania. He will become a civil rights leader and peace activist. He will join Martin Luther King Jr. in organizing the bus boycott that will establish King as a national figure. For the next 10 years, he will move back and forth between the world of the civil rights movement and the world of peace activism. He will be instrumental in helping A. Philip Randolph plan the 1963 March on Washington. But due to his youthful ties to the Communist Party, a wartime imprisonment, and an arrest in California on public morals charges, Rustin will be obligated to limit his public exposure to avoid problems for King and others whom Southern white leaders (and the FBI) were attempting to destroy. He will join the ancestors on August 24, 1987. 1919 - Nathaniel Adams Coles is born in Montgomery, Alabama. Better known as Nat King Cole, he will start his musical career in a band with his brother Eddie and in a production of Shuffle Along. Leader of the King Cole Trio, he will achieve international acclaim as a jazz pianist before becoming an even more popular balladeer known for such songs as Mona Lisa, The Christmas Song and Unforgettable. Cole will also have the distinction of being the first African American to host a network television variety show (1956-1957), a pioneer in breaking down racial barriers in Las Vegas, and a founding member of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, which will honor him with a posthumous Lifetime Achievement Grammy in 1989. He will join the ancestors on February 15, 1965. 1933 - Myrlie Beasley is born in Vicksburg, Mississippi. She will become the wife of civil rights activist Medgar Evers in 1951 and will work with him in order to combat discrimination and segregation in Mississippi. Together, they will open and manage the first NAACP Mississippi State Office. Her husband will be assassinated in 1963, by white supremacist, Byron de la Beckwith. She will later move to California where she will graduate from Pomona College. She will work in the corporate world as Director for Consumer Affairs at the Atlantic Richfield Company and in government as a Commissioner of the Los Angeles, California, Board of Public Works. She will be the first African American woman to serve on that board. She will be the author of the book, For Us, the Living, and the recipient of numerous honorary degrees. She will later become Mrs. Myrlie Evers-Williams and be elected vice-chairperson of the NAACP in 1994, and in 1995 will become the first woman chairperson. In 1998, she will be succeeded by Julian Bond as Chair of the NAACP. 1970 - The United States casts its first veto in the U.N. Security Council. The U.S. kills a resolution that would have condemned Britain for failure to use force to overthrow the white-ruled government of Rhodesia. 2000 - More than 300 members of a religious sect burn to death in a makeshift church in southwestern Uganda. 2008 - David Paterson is sworn in as New Yorks 55th governor. He is New Yorks first Black governor and the nations first legally blind governor.
Posted on: Mon, 17 Mar 2014 12:50:02 +0000
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