February Black History Calendar

February 1, 1902 – Playwright, poet, author Langston Hughes born

February 2, 1807 – Congress bans foreign slave trade.

February 3, 1956 – Autherine Lucy enrolls as the first African American student at the University of Alabama.

February 4, 1913  Rosa Parks, civil rights pioneer who sparked Montgomery bus boycott, born.

February 5, 1934 – Major league home run champion Hank Aaron born.

February 6, 1867 – Robert Tanner Jackson becomes first African American to receive a degree in dentistry.

February 7, 1883 – Ragtime pianist and composer Hubie Blake born.

February 8, 1968 – Three South Carolina State students killed during segregation protest in Orangeburg, S.C.

February 9, 1964 – Arthur Ashe, Jr. becomes first African American on U.S. Davis Cup team.

February 10, 1989 – Ronald H. Brown is elected chairman of the Democratic National Committee.

February 11, 1990 – Nelson Mandela is released from prison after 27 years.

February 12, 1909 – NAACP founded in New York City.

February 13, 1970 – Joseph L. Searles becomes first Black member of the New York Stock Exchange.

February 14, 1879 – B.K. Bruce of Mississippi becomes first African American to preside over U.S. Senate.

February 15, 1961 – U.N. sessions are disrupted by U.S. and African nationalists over assassination of Congo Premier Patrice Lumumba.

February 16, 1874 – Frederick Douglass elected president of Freedman’s Bank and Trust.

February 17, 1902 – Marion Anderson, internationally acclaimed opera star, born.

February 18, 1931 – Toni Morrison, winner of 1988 Pulitzer Prize for fiction, born.

February 19, 1923 – In Moore vs. Dempsey decision, U.S. Supreme Court guarantee due process of law to Blacks in state courts.

February 20, 1934 – Four Saints in Three Acts, by Virgil Thompson and Gertrude Stein, premieres as the first Black-performed opera on Broadway.

February 21, 1965 – Malcolm X is assassinated in New York.

February 22, 1989 – Col. Frederick Gregory was the first African American to command a space shuttle mission.

February 23, 1868 – W.E.B. Dubois, scholar, activist and author of the Souls of Black Folk, born.

February 24, 1922 – The home of Frederick Douglass made a national shrine.

February 25, 1853 – First Black YMCA organized in Washington, D.C.

February 26, 1965 – Civil rights activist Jimmie Lee Jackson died after being shot by state police in Marion, Ala.

February 27, 1988 – Debi Thomas becomes first Black to win an Olympic medal in figure skating.

February 28, 1984 – Michael Jackson wins eight Grammy awards.