BlackFacts.com: Learn/Teach/Create Black History

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

Coretta Scott King was born.

She was an American civil rights activist who was the wife of Martin Luther King, Jr.

She graduated from Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio, and in 1951 enrolled at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston. While working toward a degree in voice, she met Martin Luther King, Jr., then a graduate theology student at Boston University.  

Coretta Scott King joined her husband in civil rights activism in the 1950s and ’60s, taking part in the Montgomery bus boycott (1955) and efforts to pass the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

Following the assassination of her husband in 1968 and the conviction of James Earl Ray for the murder, she continued to be active in the civil rights movement.

She founded in Atlanta the Martin Luther King, Jr., Center for Nonviolent Social Change, which was led at the turn of the 21st century by her son Dexter.

She was the recipient of various honors and tributes both before and after her death. She was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame in 2011.

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

Gertrude Ma Rainey was born.

She was a singer who was known as the “mother of the blues” and who was recognized as the first great professional blues vocalist.

She began her career as a performer at a talent show in Columbus, Georgia, when she was approximately 12 years old. As a member of the First African Baptist Church, she began performing in black minstrel shows.

In 1923, Rainey was discovered by Paramount Records producer J. Mayo Williams. She signed a recording contract with that company, and in December she made her first eight recordings in Chicago.

Rainey recorded with Thomas Dorsey and Louis Armstrong, and with the Georgia Jazz Band. She toured until 1935 when she largely retired from performing.

After her mother and sister died, Rainey retired completely from the music business in 1935, returning to her hometown of Columbus, Georgia. There, she reportedly owned two theaters, the Lyric and the Airdome. 

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

United Negro College Fund was founded.

It is is a philanthropic organization that funds scholarships for Black students and general scholarship funds for 37 private historically Black colleges and universities.

The organization awards 10,000 students annually through 400 scholarship and internship programs, so that students from low-and moderate-income families can afford college tuition, books and room and board.

In 1943, Frederick D. Patterson wrote a letter to The Pittsburgh Courier proposing the creation of an alliance of black colleges that would raise money for their mutual benefit.

Its first campaign received the support of many prominent Americans, including President Franklin D. Roosevelt and John D. Rockefeller, II. 

The collective effort raised $765,000, equivalent to $10 million today, which is three times what its member institutions had raised separately the previous year.

In June 2020, philanthropists Reed Hastings and his wife Patty Quillin donated $120 million to the UNCF to be used as scholarship funds for students enrolled at UNCF institutions. Their single donation is the largest in UNCF history.

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

Mathematician David Blackwell was born.

He made significant contributions to game theory, probability theory, information theory, and Bayesian statistics.

He also broke racial barriers when he was named the first African American member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences.

At age 16 he entered the University of Illinois, where his early aptitude for mathematics blossomed.

He earned bachelor’s (1938), master’s (1939), and doctorate (1941) degrees, and a postdoctoral fellowship at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, New Jersey.

In 1954 Blackwell was invited to join the faculty at the University of California, Berkeley, where he became that institution’s first African American tenured professor.  

He was known for his independent invention of dynamic programming, which is used today in finance and in various areas of science, including genome analysis.  

He wrote two books, published more than 80 papers and held 12 honorary degrees from Harvard, Yale, Carnegie Mellon, Howard and other universities.

In 2018, UC Berkeley named an undergraduate residence hall in his honor.

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

Inventor Granville T. Woods was born.

He was known for devising a number of new electrical devices for the railroads. His inventions helped make rail travel safer and faster.

Woods studied engineering at night school and became a steam locomotive engineer. He earned his first patent in 1884 for an improved steam boiler furnace.

By 1878, he had become an engineer on the Ironsides, a British steamship. Within two years, he had become the ship's chief engineer.

In all of the positions that he held, Woods experienced discrimination. Unhappy with his inability to obtain higher positions, Woods moved to Cincinnati, Ohio, where he established his own machine shop in 1880.

He invented and patented Tunnel Construction for the electric railroad system, and was referred to by some as the "Black Edison".

In 2004, the New York City Transit Authority organized an exhibition on Woods which utilized bus and train depots, and an issue of four million MetroCards commemorating the inventor's achievements in pioneering the third rail.

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

Bob Marley One Love Concert.

It was a large concert held at The National Stadium in Kingston, Jamaica, and was held during a political civil war between opposing parties Jamaican Labour Party and the People's National Party.

With tensions rising, both parties hired local gang members for protection. Ironically, it was the gang members who came up with idea of the One Love Concert. They wanted the fighting to stop. 

It brought together 16 of Reggae's biggest acts, and was dubbed by the media as the "Third World Woodstock", "Bob Marley plays for Peace" and simply, "Bob Marley Is Back." 

Peter Tosh took the opportunity during his performance to berate the two political leaders sitting directly in front of him for their positions against legalizing marijuana.

The concert came to its peak during Bob Marley & The Wailers' performance of "Jammin'", when Marley joined the hands of political rivals Michael Manley and Edward Seaga.

It was not until May 1981 that Prime Minister Edward Seaga and Michael Manley met again in public and shook hands.

It was at the Jamaican State Funeral for Bob Marley.

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

Prince passed away.

He was a singer, guitarist, songwriter, and producer among the most talented American musicians of his generation.

Prince’s recording career began with funk and soul marketed to a Black audience; his early music also reflected the contemporary musical impact of disco.

With very few African American residents, his hometown, Minneapolis, Minnesota, was an unlikely site for the development of a major Black star, but Prince even managed to lead other local musicians, to major success.

Purple Rain (1984) made him one of the major stars of the 1980s and remains his biggest-selling album.

In 1994, Prince began to release albums in quick succession as a means of releasing himself from his contractual obligations to Warner Bros. He also began appearing with the word "slave" written on his face.

Prince formally adopted the "Love Symbol" as his stage name. At this time, Prince was referred to as "The Artist Formerly Known as Prince" or "The Artist".

He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2004.

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

Prince passed away.

He was a singer, guitarist, songwriter, and producer among the most talented American musicians of his generation.

Prince’s recording career began with funk and soul marketed to a Black audience; his early music also reflected the contemporary musical impact of disco.

With very few African American residents, his hometown, Minneapolis, Minnesota, was an unlikely site for the development of a major Black star, but Prince even managed to lead other local musicians, to major success.

Purple Rain (1984) made him one of the major stars of the 1980s and remains his biggest-selling album.

In 1994, Prince began to release albums in quick succession as a means of releasing himself from his contractual obligations to Warner Bros. He also began appearing with the word "slave" written on his face.

Prince formally adopted the "Love Symbol" as his stage name. At this time, Prince was referred to as "The Artist Formerly Known as Prince" or "The Artist".

He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2004.

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

The United States Supreme Court upheld the use of busing to achieve racial desegregation in schools.

The Burger Court in Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education ruled that the school district must achieve racial balance even if it meant redrawing school boundaries and the use of busing as a legal tool. 

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

However, many neighborhood schools remained segregated due to the demographics of a city or town.

In Charlotte, North Carolina, for example, in the mid-1960s less than 5 percent of African American children attended integrated schools.  Indeed, busing was used by white officials to maintain segregation.

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), on behalf of the parents of a six-year-old child, sued the Charlotte-Mecklenburg school district to allow their son to attend Seversville Elementary School. 

James McMillan, the federal district judge in the case, ruled in favor of the family and oversaw the implementation of a busing strategy that integrated the district’s schools. McMillan’s decision was appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which upheld it.

The busing strategy was adopted elsewhere in the United States and played an instrumental role in integrating U.S. public schools.

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

Max Robinson became the 1st African-American journalist to anchor a nightly network newscast.

Robinson’s first journalism job began and ended in 1959, when he was hired to read news at a Portsmouth, Va., television station. 

In 1978, when Roone Arledge was looking to revamp ABC News' nightly news broadcast into World News Tonight, he remembered Robinson from a 60 Minutes interview and hired him to be a part of his new three-anchor format.

Robinson's ABC tenure was marked by conflicts between himself and the management of ABC News over viewpoints and the portrayal of Black America in the news. 

In addition, Robinson was known to fight racism at any turn and often felt unworthy of the admiration he received and was not pleased with what he had accomplished.

Together with Bob Strickland, Robinson established a program for mentoring young black broadcast journalists.

During his career, he received many awards, including the Capital Press Club Journalist of the year award, and the Ohio State Award, as well as an award from the National Education Association (NEA).

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