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

The American Nicodemus Town Company is founded.

It is the only remaining western community established by African Americans after the Civil War.

Having an important role in American History, the town symbolizes the pioneering spirit of these ex-slaves who fled the war-torn South in search of real freedom and a chance to restart their lives. 

The townsite of Nicodemus was planned in 1877 by W.R. Hill, a land developer from Indiana, and Reverend W.H. Smith, a black man, forming the Nicodemus Town Company. 

The Nicodemus Town Company produced numerous circulars to promote the town, inviting “Colored People of the United States” to come and settle in the “Great Solomon Valley.” 

By 1880, Nicodemus had a population of almost 500, boasting a bank, two hotels, three churches, a newspaper, a drug store, and three general stores – surrounded by twelve square miles of cultivated land.

In 1976, Nicodemus was named a National Historic Landmark.

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

Ralph Abernathy passed away.

He was a pastor and civil rights leader who was Martin Luther King’s chief aide and closest associate during the civil rights movement of the 1950s and ’60s.

He was ordained a Baptist minister in 1948 and preached his first sermon on Mother's Day. In 1950 he graduated with a bachelor's degree in mathematics.

After the arrest of Rosa Parks on December 1, 1955, Abernathy collaborated with King to create the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA),which organized the Montgomery bus boycott.

The King/Abernathy partnership spearheaded successful nonviolent movements in many cities. They journeyed together, often sharing the same hotel rooms, and leisure times with their wives, children, family, and friends.  

They were both jailed 17 times together, for their involvement in the movement.

After the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968, the leadership of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) was  transferred to Ralph Abernathy, who presided until 1977.

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BlackFacts.com presents the black fact of the day for April 16.

Birthday of Essex Hemphill.

He was an influential poet, award-winning editor, memorable performance artist, and fearless activist.

Hemphill's first books were the self-published chapbooks "Earth Life" (1985) and "Conditions" (1986). 

His poetry evoked the challenges of being black, gay and young in the midst of the AIDS epidemic.

Despite a relatively short literary career, Hemphill became arguably the most critically acclaimed and best known openly gay contemporary  African American poet.

He received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and grants from the Pew Charitable Trust Fellowship in the Arts and the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities.

Through his writing and editing, Hemphill helped break the silence surrounding Black gay experiences and enabled other African American gay men to find their voices.

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BlackFacts.com presents the black fact of the day for April 15.

Birthday of Norma Merrick Sklarek.

She was the first African American woman to pass her license exam to officially become an architect in both New York and California.

Sklarek graduated from Columbia in 1950 with a B.Arch., one of two women and the only African American in her class.

After this, she faced discrimination in her search for work as an architect, applying to and being rejected by nineteen firms.

In 1959, she became the first African American woman member of the American Institute of Architects.

In 1960, she took a job at Gruen Associates and became responsible for hiring and overseeing staff architects and coordinating technical aspects of major projects, including the California Mart, Fox Plaza, and the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo.

In 1980, Sklarek was the first African American woman elected to the College of Fellows of the American Institute of Architects for her outstanding contributions to the profession, the first woman in the Los Angeles AIA chapter to be awarded this honor.

She has been called the “Rosa Parks of architecture.”

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BlackFacts.com presents the black fact of the day for April 14.

Tiger Woods wins Third Masters Golf Tournament.

He is widely regarded as one of the greatest golfers of all time and one of the most famous athletes of all time. 

He has been elected to the World Golf Hall of Fame.

Following an outstanding junior, college, and amateur golf career, Woods turned professional in 1996 at the age of 20.

He reached number one in the world rankings for the first time in June 1997, less than a year after turning pro.

When Woods won the 2001 Masters, he became the only player to win four consecutive major professional golf titles. 

This achievement came to be known as the "Tiger Slam."

Many courses in the PGA Tour rotation have added yardage to their tees in an effort to reduce the advantage of long hitters like Woods, in a strategy that became known as "Tiger-proofing".

He received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Donald Trump, who noted the golfer's ability to battle back from adversity and his "relentless will to win, win, win." 

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BlackFacts.com presents the black fact of the day for April 13.

The Colfax Massacre.

During the Reconstruction era following the American Civil War, the South was in turmoil. 

Many Republican politicians, who controlled the federal government, wanted equality for African Americans.

In 1872 a bitterly contested election for Louisiana governor left both Republicans and Democrats declaring their candidate the winner.

Federal troops and a Black militia supported the Republicans, while the Democrats formed a militia made up of local white residents including members of the Ku Klux Klan and other white supremacist organizations.

A Black armed militia unit occupied the Grant Parish courthouse to prevent the Democrats from overthrowing the local Republican government. 

The white militia surrounded the courthouse, fired a cannon, and forced a Black man to set the courthouse on fire. 

As many as 150 African Americans and three white people died during and immediately after the incident.

The Colfax Massacre was more or less ignored until the 1920s, when local officials raised a monument honoring the three white men who died in the attack on the courthouse, which called the massacre a “riot.”

The marker was removed on May 15, 2021, for eventual placement in a museum.

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BlackFacts.com presents the black fact of the day for April 9.

Juanita Hall became the first African American to win a Tony Award for Best Supporting Actress.

She was an American musical theatre and film actress, remembered for her roles in the original stage and screen versions of the Rodgers and Hammerstein musicals "South Pacific" as Bloody Mary and "Flower Drum Song" as Madame Liang.

Prior to her acting roles, she assembled her own chorus group and kept busy with performances in concert, on records, in films, and on the air.  Hall’s television appearances in the 1950s and early 1960s included The Ed Sullivan Show, The Coca-Cola Hour, The Perry Como Show.

She also performed on radio in the soap opera The Story of Ruby Valentine on the National Negro Network. The serial was broadcast on 35 stations.

Hall is remembered as a consummate professional and a thoughtful colleague. 

"I think everyone who had anything to do with her loved her," wrote Richard Rodgers.

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BlackFacts.com presents the black fact of the day for April 12.

Josephine Baker passed away.

She was an American-born French entertainer, French Resistance agent, and civil rights activist. 

Her career was centered primarily in Europe, mostly in her adopted France. 

She was the first Black woman to star in a major motion picture, the 1927 silent film "Siren of the Tropics".

Although based in France, Baker supported the Civil Rights Movement during the 1950s.

She refused to perform for segregated audiences in the United States, although she was offered $10,000 by a Miami club.

In 1951, she made charges of racism against a club in Manhattan, where she had been refused service.

Actress Grace Kelly, who was there at the time, rushed over to Baker, took her by the arm, and stormed out, vowing never to return. They became close friends after the incident.

After decades of rejection by her countrymen and a lifetime spent dealing with racism, in 1973, Baker performed at Carnegie Hall in New York and was greeted with a standing ovation.

Place Joséphine Baker in the Montparnasse Quarter of Paris was named in her honor.

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BlackFacts.com presents the black fact of the day for April 11.

Birthday of chemist Percy Julian.

He was the first to synthesize the natural product physostigmine and was a pioneer in the industrial large-scale chemical synthesis of the human hormones progesterone and testosterone from plant sterols.

He was born in Montgomery, Alabama, the son of a railway mail clerk and the grandson of enslaved people.

Julian attended DePauw University in Greencastle, Indiana. The college accepted few African-American students.

He graduated in 1920 as a Phi Beta Kappa and valedictorian.

He was the first African-American chemist inducted into the National Academy of Sciences, and the second African-American scientist inducted from any field.

In 1953, he established Julian Laboratories, a successful enterprise that he sold for more than $2 million in 1961. 

He later formed Julian Research Institute, a nonprofit research organization. 

He was active as a fund-raiser for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) for their project to sue to enforce civil rights legislation.

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BlackFacts.com presents the black fact of the day for April 10.

Howard Thurman passed away.

He was an American Baptist preacher and theologian, the first African American dean of chapel at a traditionally white American university, and a founder of the first interracial interfaith congregation in the United States.

Thurman's theology of radical nonviolence influenced and shaped a generation of civil rights activists, and he was a key mentor to leaders within the civil rights movement, including Martin Luther King Jr.

Thurman traveled broadly, heading Christian missions and meeting with world figures such as Mahatma Gandhi.

He was a prolific author, writing twenty books on theology, religion, and philosophy. 

The most famous of his works, Jesus and the Disinherited (1949), deeply influenced Martin Luther King Jr. and other leaders, both black and white, of the modern Civil Rights Movement. 

Howard University School of Divinity named their chapel the Thurman Chapel in memory of Howard Thurman.

Learn black history, teach black history at BlackFacts.com