BlackFacts.com: Learn/Teach/Create Black History

BlackFacts.com presents the black fact of the day for July 4.

Marian Anderson and Ralph Bunche receive the first Medals of Freedom.

She was an American singer, and an important figure in the struggle for African-American artists to overcome racial prejudice.

Bunche was an American political scientist, diplomat, member of the United Nations for more than two decades, activist of the US civil rights movement, and the first African Ameri...

BlackFacts.com presents the black fact of the day for July 3.

Jackie Robinson becomes the first African American to be inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame.

He was an American professional baseball player who became the first African American to play in Major League Baseball (MLB) in the modern era.

After demonstrating exceptional athletic ability during high school and junior college, he excelled at baseball, football, basketball,...

BlackFacts.com presents the black fact of the day for July 2.

Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act.

In the landmark 1954 case Brown v. Board of Education, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that racial segregation in schools was unconstitutional.

The 10 years that followed saw great strides for the African American civil rights movement, as non-violent demonstrations won thousands of supporters to the cause.  Led by Dr. Martin Luther ...

BlackFacts.com presents the black fact of the day for July 1st.

Roland Hayes named soloist with Boston Symphony Orchestra.

He was the first African American singer to achieve success on the classical concert stage.

Hayes was born in Curryville, Georgia, to Fanny and William Hayes, who were former slaves. He wanted an education, but he had to drop out of school to help support his family and worked at many jobs.

He moved to Louisville, ...

BlackFacts.com presents the black fact of the day for June 30.

Lena Horne was born.

She was an African-American dancer, actress, Grammy-winning singer, and civil rights activist.

Horne left school at age 16 to help support her ailing mother and became a dancer at the Cotton Club in Harlem, New York City.  She was discovered by producer John Hammond, and soon after she performed in a solo show at Carnegie Hall.

A remarkably charismatic...

BlackFacts.com presents the black fact of the day for June 29.

NAACP chairman S.G. Spottswood criticize Nixon's administration.

Stephen Gill Spottswood was born in Boston, Massachusetts. He went on to Albright College, earning a B.A. in history in 1917; Gordon Divinity School; and Yale Divinity School, where he earned his doctorate.

He joined the NAACP in 1919 and was an active voice for racial equality throughout his adult life.

He ...

BlackFacts.com presents the black fact of the day for June 28.

The U.S. Supreme Court invalidated the use of racial quotas for university applications. 

The medical school at the University of California, as part of the university’s affirmative action program, had reserved 16 percent of its admission places for minority applicants.

Allan Bakke, a white California man who had twice unsuccessfully applied for admission to the medical ...

BlackFacts.com presents the black fact of the day for June 27.

Frederick Jones invents the ticket dispensing machine.

He was an U.S. inventor credited with more than 60 patents.

After a challenging childhood, Jones taught himself mechanical and electrical engineering, inventing a range of devices relating to refrigeration, sound, and automobiles.

In the late 1920s, Jones designed a series of devices for the developing movie industry, w...

BlackFacts.com presents the black fact of the day for June 26.

Sit-in demonstrations and passive resistance began in Cairo, Illinois.

Despite Illinois’s relatively liberal reputation, Cairo, a small city far south from Chicago, was thoroughly segregated and violently racist.

Local youths formed the Cairo Nonviolent Freedom Committee (CNVFC) and invited Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) to go to the small city to initiat...

BlackFacts.com presents the black fact of the day for June 25.

Sonia Sotomayor was born.

She is an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States,  the first woman of color, first Hispanic, and first Latina member of the Court.

Sotomayor was raised in a housing project in the Bronx.

After the death of her father, her mother worked long hours as a nurse to support the family.

She graduated summa cum laude from Princeton Univ...

BlackFacts.com presents the black fact of the day for June 24.

John R. Lynch became first African-American to preside over deliberations of a national political party.

Born into slavery in Louisiana, he became free in 1863 under the Emancipation Proclamation. 

He became active in the Republican Party by the age of 20. Although too young to participate as a delegate, he attended the state's constitutional convention of 1867, studying i...

BlackFacts.com presents the black fact of the day for June 23.

Wilma Rudolph was born.

She was an American sprinter, the first American woman to win three track-and-field gold medals in a single Olympics.

Physically disabled for much of her early life, Rudolph wore a leg brace until she was twelve years old.

Because there was little medical care available to African American residents of Clarksville in the 1940s, Rudolph's parents soug...

BlackFacts.com presents the black fact of the day for June 22.

Arthur Ashe leads UCLA to the NCAA tennis championship.

Ashe was coached and mentored by Robert Walter Johnson at his tennis summer-camp home in Lynchburg, Virginia.

Johnson helped fine-tune Ashe's game and taught him the importance of racial socialization through sportsmanship, etiquette and the composure that would later become an Ashe hallmark. 

In 1958, Ashe became the ...

JUNETEENTH - A Celebration of Freedom.

Juneteenth (a portmanteau of June and nineteenth) is also known as Freedom Day, Jubilee Day, Liberation Day, and Emancipation Day.

It is a holiday celebrating the emancipation of those who had been enslaved in the United States. It is now celebrated annually on the 19th of June throughout the United States.

HISTORY

During the American Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Pr...

BlackFacts.com presents the black fact of the day for June 21.

Painter Henry Ossawa Tanner was born.

He was an American artist and the first African-American painter to gain international acclaim.

After a childhood spent largely in Philadelphia, Tanner began an art career in earnest in 1876,painting harbour scenes, landscapes, and animals from the Philadelphia Zoo.

Although many artists refused to accept an African-American apprentice...

BlackFacts.com presents the black fact of the day for June 20.

Harry Belafonte became the first African American to win an Emmy award.

As one of the most successful African-American pop stars in history, he was dubbed the “King of Calypso” for popularizing the Caribbean musical style with an international audience in the 1950s. 

He was an early supporter of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s and 1960s, and one of Martin Luther Kin...

BlackFacts.com presents the black fact of the day for June 19.

Solidarity Day March

In November 1967 civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., and the staff of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) met and decided to launch a Poor People’s Campaign to highlight and find solutions to many of the problems facing the country’s poor. 

The Poor People’s Campaign was still in the planning stages when King was assassinate...

BlackFacts.com presents the black fact of the day for June 18.

W.H. Richardson patents Baby Buggy.

He was born in Baltimore, Maryland, and he made a huge improvement to the baby carriage.

Richardson decided to create a stroller  to be shaped more like a symmetrical basket, rather than a shell, as it was back then.

This new design made it easier for parents and nannies to move the carriage around 360 degrees, compared to only 90 degrees...

BlackFacts.com presents the black fact of the day for June 17.

Tuskegee Boycott began. 

The issue of the boycott was segregation and voting rights.  The voting districts for the city of Tuskegee were changed dramatically to prevent black citizens from electing local officials. 

The Tuskegee Civic Association (TCA), a predominantly black organization working for civil rights, challenged the new district  boundaries and took it to co...