1950 to Present

Joe Louis returns to boxing and is defeated by the reigning champion, the African American boxer Ezzard Charles. Read more...

Forty-two percent of all black women in the labor force are employed in domestic service and 19.1 percent are in other service work; only 5.4 percent are in clerical and sales positions and 5.7 percent are in professional positions. Read more...

Althea Gibson becomes first black player to compete in the U.S. Tennis Championship at Forest Hills. Read more...

The attorney Edith Sampson is the first African American to be appointed as a delegate to the United Nations General Assembly. Read more...

Jesse Owens is named the greatest track star of the first half of the twentieth century by Associated Press. Read more...

Norma Merrick Sklarek graduates from the School of Architecture at Columbia University and in 1954 becomes the first black woman to be licensed as an architect in the United States. Read more...

Sam Jethroe, an outfielder on the Boston Braves, is named the National League Rookie of the Year. Read more...

Four black players sign contracts with teams in the National Basketball Association (NBA) thus breaking the color line in the league (founded in 1946): Chuck Cooper (Boston Celtics), Earl Lloyd (Washington Capitols), Nat "Sweetwater" Clifton (NY Knicks) and Hank DeZonie (Tri-City Blackhawks). Cooper is generally considered the first African American in the NBA but because of scheduling, Lloyd is the first black to enter a game. DeZonie, who had starred on the all-black Harlem Rens, plays in only five NBA games. The first black player singed by the NBA was Harold Hunter, a starter at North Carolina College for Negroes (now North Carolina Central University), but he was cut by the Washington Capitols before playing a game. Read more...

In Sweat v. Painter the U.S. Supreme Court orders the University of Texas Law School to integrate; in McLaurin v. Oklahoma Board of Regents the court prohibits the University of Oklahoma from discriminating against blacks once they are admitted to the university. Read more...

Helen Octavia Dickens becomes the first African American woman admitted to the American College of Surgeons. Read more...

Zelma Watson George becomes the first black woman to play a leading role in an opera on Broadway. Read more...

U.S. Supreme Court rules in Henderson v. United States that segregated tables or dining cars violate the Interstate Commerce Act. Read more...

Although the armed forces are largely desegregated, black servicemen are still barred from many military specialties and training programs. Read more...

The poet Gwendolyn Brooks receives the Pulitzer Prize for her second volume of poetry Annie Allen (1949), which explores the inner life of an African American woman as she adjusts her youthful dreams to the realities of life in an urban ghetto. She is the first African American to be awarded the prize in any category. Read more...

Elma Lewis, dance and drama instructor, founds the Elma Lewis School of Fine Arts in Boston, Massachusetts.

Arthur Dorrington signs with New York Rangers of National Hockey League (NHL), but injuries while playing in the minor leagues prevent him from ever playing in NHL.

City University of New York wins the NCAA basketball championship with three black players on its team, at the time, it is the most ever for a championship team.

Under pressure from the Minneapolis mayor Hubert H. Humphrey, and facing a lawsuit, the American Bowling Congress (ABC), and the Women's International Bowling Congress (WIBC) remove the “Caucasians only” clause from their constitutions.

Black population of the United States is 15,042,286, or 10 percent of the total population. There are 7,743,564 women.

Ralph Bunche wins the Nobel Peace Prize.

The literary critic and historian Saunders Redding publishes They Came in Chains: Americans from Africa. Read more...

Carter G. Woodson, the “Father of Black History” dies. Read more...

Roy Campanella wins his first Most Valuable Player of the Year award (the others follow in 1953 and 1955). Read more...

Althea Gibson becomes the first African American woman to play in the Wimbledon tennis tournament in England. Read more...

The prima ballerina Janet Collins makes her debut in Aida, becoming the first black artist to perform on the stage of the Metropolitan Opera House in New York City. Read more...

Life magazine features Maude Daniels Callen's work as a midwife in South Carolina. Read more...

Arie Taylor becomes the first black person to be a Women's Air Force classroom instructor. Read more...

The attorney Edith Sampson is the first African American appointed as a delegate to the U.N. General Assembly. Read more...

Mary Church Terrell, longtime civil rights activist, joins sit-ins challenging racial segregation in restaurants and other public facilities. Read more...

Willie Mays, the New York Giants outfielder, is named the National League Rookie of the Year. Read more...

Libya becomes an independent monarchy under Idris I. Read more...

Paul Robeson and William L. Patterson petition the United Nations, charging the United States with genocide by “deliberately inflicting on [African Americans] conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction” through executions, lynchings, and terrorism. Read more...

John H. Johnson Publishing launches the weekly, pocket-sized magazine Jet. Read more...

The National Negro Labor Council is formed. Read more...

The National Association of Colored Graduate Nurses merges with the American Nurses Association. Read more...

Sugar Ray Robinson wins the middleweight boxing championship. Read more...

Black concert artists first appear on television: William Warfield and Muriel Rahn on the Ed Sullivan Show, followed by Marian Anderson in 1952. Read more...

The high school student Barbara Johns initiates a student strike in Prince Edward County, Virginia; this will become one of the four cases eventually decided by the U.S. Supreme Court in the landmark case Brown v. Board of Education. Read more...

The last all-black unit in the U.S. Army, the 24th Infantry, is deactivated. Read more...

Henry Green Parks Jr. starts the Parks Sausage Company in 1951 in an abandoned dairy plant in Baltimore with two employees. Employing the soon-to-be familiar slogan, “More Parks Sausages, please Mom!” it grows into one of the most successful black-owned businesses in the country.

Mildred Fay Jefferson becomes the first African American woman to graduate from Harvard University's Medical School. She goes on to serve three terms as president of the National Right to Life Committee.

Mable Fairbanks becomes a professional skater after winning a number of amateur competitions.

Players on the all-white Oklahoma A & M (now Oklahoma State University) football team target Drake University star Johnny Bright, breaking his jaw during a game. Photographs later show A & M player Wilbanks Smith intentionally hurting Bright.

Ethel L. Payne, known as the “first lady of the black press,” begins reporting for the Chicago Defender. Two years later she becomes the paper’s one-person bureau in Washington, D.C. Read more...

The educator and activist Anna Julia Cooper publishes Personal Recollection of the Grimké Family and The Life and Writings of Charlotte Forten Grimké. Read more...

Harry T. Moore, a voting rights advocate in Florida and the leader of the state's NAACP chapter, is assassinated. Read more...

Thirty-nine-year-old Archie Moore wins the light heavyweight boxing championship after being frozen out of championship bouts for a number of years because fight promoters decided there were too many black champions. Read more...

Tuskegee Institute reports that in the seventy-one years of recording lynchings in the United States, 1952 is the first year without any reported lynchings. Read more...

Charlotta Bass becomes the first black woman to be nominated for vice president of the United States by a major political party, when she runs on the Progressive Party ticket. Read more...

Sugar Ray Robinson retires from boxing. Read more...

Joe Black, pitcher for the Brooklyn Dodgers, is named Rookie of the Year. Read more...

Solly Walker plays basketball for St. Johns against Kentucky. It is the first time a black player competes in an NCAA East Regional Tournament game. Read more...

Tennessee State becomes the first HBCU to compete in the NAIA basketball tournament, where the team gets to the quarterfinals before losing. Tennessee qualified to play by winning the Negro Basketball Tournament; it is the first time the tournament champion earns a slot in the NAIA. Read more...

The PGA changes its rules to allow blacks to enter some golf tournaments, though African Americans are still barred from joining the PGA. Read more...

The U.S. Olympic basketball team is entirely white, although black athletes compete on other teams, especially the track and field team. John Davis wins his second weightlifting Olympic gold medal in the heavyweight class; James Bradford wins silver in the same event. Read more...

Rioting begins as African Americans move into Trumbull Park housing in Chicago, Illinois. Read more...

University of Tennessee admits its first black students. Read more...

Ralph Ellison publishes Invisible Man, the story of a black man from the South who comes to Harlem; the book receives the National Book Award and is recognized as a masterpiece of twentieth-century American writing.. Read more...

Norman L. McGhee, a licensed stockbroker-dealer, establishes McGhee and Company Investment Securities in Cleveland, Ohio. When he opens a branch office in Chicago, his firm is reportedly the first African American investment firm to sell general securities.

Toni Stone, originally of Saint Paul, Minnesota, signs to play for the Indianapolis Clowns, the Negro American League champions. Read more...

“Big Mo” Aldredge becomes the first African American woman to make the national Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) women's basketball team. Read more...

Jim “Junior” Gilliam, who plays second base on the Brooklyn Dodgers, is named Rookie of the Year. Read more...

Ray Felix become first black in the National Basketball Association to win the Rookie of the Year award. Read more...

Roy Campanella, of the Brooklyn Dodgers, wins Most Valuable Player for the second time. Read more...

African Americans in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, begin bus boycotts. Read more...

Dorothy Maynor, the soprano singer and educator, performs the national anthem at the inauguration of President Dwight Eisenhower. It is the first time an African American sings at a presidential inaugural. Read more...

President Eisenhower establishes a committee for nondiscriminatory policy in the awarding of government contracts. Read more...

Gwendolyn Brooks publishes the autobiographical novel Maud Martha. Read more...

Mary Elizabeth Vroman, the first African American woman to gain membership to the Screen Writers Guild, adapts her autobiographical short story into the screenplay Bright Road, starring Dorothy Dandridge and Harry Belafonte. Read more...

African American hotel owners and managers in New York found the National Hotel Association.

Dempsey J. Travis establishes the Sivart Mortgage Company in Chicago, Illinois; it is the first African American mortgage banking company in the country.

James Del Rio becomes the first African American licensed mortgage banker. He goes on to start one of the first black-owned mortgage companies in Detroit.

The federal governmnet creates the Small Business Association to provide financing, primarily through grants, loans, and federal contracts, to small businesses (defined as businesses with less than 500 employees). However, not until 1957 will the SBA make a concerted effort to assist small businesses.

Hulan Jack is elected president of the Borough of Manhattan.

The historian Benjamin Quarles publishes The Negro in the Civil War. Read more...

James Baldwin publishes his first novel, Go Tell It on the Mountain. A semiautobiographical narrative, the book will be nominated for a National Book Award the same year. Read more...

The writer Melvin B. Tolson, named the poet laureate of Liberia, publishes the poem “Libretto for the Republic of Liberia.” Read more...

Dorothy Dandridge appears in Carmen Jones, one of the most publicized and successful all-black movies. For the title role, Dandridge is nominated for an Academy Award in the Best Actress category, the first black woman to be so honored. Read more...

Benjamin O. Davis Jr. becomes the first black general in the U.S. Air Force. Read more...

The Supreme Court issues its first decision in Brown v. Board of Education, abolishing segregation and ordering that the states proceed “with all deliberate speed” to desegregate public schools; this decision overturns the “separate but equal” doctrine established in 1896 in Plessy v. Ferguson. Read more...

George Ellis Johnson leaves the cosmetics giant Fuller Products Company and with the Chicago barber Orville Nelson founds Johnson Products. Launched with only $250, Johnson Products will eventually dominate the African American hair care market by manufacturing the Ultra Wave and Ultra Sheen products. Read more...

Jesse Thornton, an African American businessman in Chicago, and the ex-boxing champion Joe Louis capitalize on Louis's fame and launch the Joe Louis Milk Company. It is the only black-owned dairy company in the country. Read more...

Willie Mays, of the New York Giants, is named the National League's Most Valuable Player. Read more...

Fritz Pollard become first black player inducted into the National Football Hall of Fame. Read more...

Eight states and the District of Columbia begin to integrate their public schools. Read more...

The first White Citizens Council meets in Mississippi to propose legislation to reinstate racial segregation. Read more...

The U.S. military announces the elimination of all segregated regiments in the armed forces. Read more...

Ernesta G. Procope and her husband John organize the commercial insurance brokerage E. G. Bowman Company.

George J. Washington establishes the Washington Shirt Manufacturing Company, the only black-owned shirt manufacturer in the country.

Henry F. Henderson, Jr. founds H. F. Henderson Industries, a defense electronics company, in his basement. The company grows to be one of the largest African American businesses in the country.

Doris Evans McGinty earns a PhD in musicology from the University of Oxford (England).

John O. Killens publishes Youngblood, a protest novel describing the struggle of a black family in the South. Read more...

Paule Marshall publishes her first short story, “The Valley Between,” in Our World magazine. Read more...

Forty-two year old Archie Moore finally gets a shot at the heavyweight title. In the second round he knocks down the title holder Rocky Marciano for only the second time in Marciano's career. But Marciano recovers and Moore is knocked out in the ninth round. Moore continues to fight until 1963. (In 1962 he is defeated by Cassius Clay, who will soon change his name to Muhammad Ali.)Read more...

Alice Childress's Trouble in Mind is the first work by a black woman playwright to be produced off-Broadway. It later wins an Obie Award, the first presented to a black woman. Read more...

President Dwight D. Eisenhower appoints Jewel LaFontant Mankarious to serve as assistant U.S. attorney for the North District of Illinois. Read more...

Clotilde Dent Bowen becomes the U.S. Army's first black female physician to attain the rank of colonel. In 1947 she was the first black woman to graduate from Ohio State University with an MD. Read more...

Rosa Parks refuses to yield her seat to a white passenger on a Montgomery bus; her arrest sparks the Montgomery Bus Boycott, which brings Martin Luther King Jr. to national prominence as the principal leader of the Civil Rights Movement. Read more...

A black singer first appears in a televised opera: Leontyne Price in Puccini's Tosca on NBC. Read more...

Marian Anderson makes her debut at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York City, becoming the first black soloist to sing at the Met. Read more...

Sugar Ray Robinson returns to boxing and regains the middleweight title. Read more...

The Syracuse Nationals, with two black players, Earl Lloyd and Jim Tucker, win the NBA Championship. This is the first NBA championship in which blacks play. Read more...

Interstate Commerce Commission bans racial segregation in all facilities and vehicles engaged in interstate transportation. Read more...

A Baltimore court bans segregated recreational facilities. Read more...

Jean Blackwell Hutson becomes curator of what is now the New York Public Library's Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture; she guides its development until her retirement in 1984. Read more...

Willa Player becomes president of Bennett College. Read more...

The Brooklyn Dodgers win their first World Series championship, defeating the New York Yankees with a team that includes the black stars Roy Campanella, Jackie Robinson, Junior Gilliam, Joe Black, Don Newcombe, and the Afro-Cuban Sandy Amoros. Robinson steals home in one game, exemplifying the dramatic style of play that blacks brought to the major leagues. The Dodger's catcher Campanella is awarded his third Most Valuable Player award. Read more...

In Salisbury, Maryland, Melvin C. Hutt opens the Franklin Hotel, with twenty-three nonsegregated units that he offers to African American and white travelers.

Philip M. Jenkins establishes the investment firm, Special Markets, Inc., which specifically targets ethnic markets.

Charlie Parker, one of the founders of bebop, dies at age thirty-four. Read more...

Mary McLeod Bethune dies in Florida. Read more...

Emmett Till's mutilated body is pulled from the Pearl River in Money, Mississippi; the fourteen-year-old from Chicago, while staying with relatives for the summer, was lynched after reportedly "wolf-whistling" at a white woman. Although the black press continues to report on the story for several weeks, it takes a month before the white press reports on it. Read more...

Bill Russell of the University of San Francisco is named College Basketball Player of the Year; he leads the U.S. Olympic team to a gold medal in Melbourne, Australia. President Dwight Eisenhower, fearful that the San Francisco star will not play because of racial politics in the United States, personally calls Russell and asks him to join the team. Read more...

Under a Supreme Court order, and with help from Ruby Hurley (NAACP regional director), Autherine Lucy enrolls in the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, only to be expelled days later on grounds that her own safety is in jeopardy. Read more...

Ann Gregory becomes the first African American to play in an integrated women's amateur golf championship. Read more...

The singer Nat King Cole is attacked on stage in Birmingham, Alabama. Read more...

The home of Martin Luther King Jr. is bombed in connection to the bus boycott in Montgomery; the home of Reverend F.L. Shuttlesworth is bombed by racial terrorists in Birmingham, Alabama. Read more...

Alice Childress publishes Like One of the Family: Conversations from a Domestic's Life. Read more...

Jackie Robinson receives the Spingarn Medal for his achievements in baseball and for his role in opening the sport to other African Americans. Read more...

Sudan, Morocco, and Tunisia gain their independence. Read more...

The Brooklyn Dodgers pitcher Don Newcombe wins the National League Most Valuable Player. Newcombe also wins Cy Young Award as the best pitcher in baseball. He becomes the first player to win both awards in one year. Read more...

Blacks in Birmingham, Alabama, begin mass defiance of the state's Jim Crow laws. Read more...

Kenny Washington, the first black to play on the UCLA football team, is elected to College Football Hall of FameRead more...

Alabama outlaws the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Read more...

At the summer Olympics black athletes win ten gold medals, three silver, and five bronze. Milton Campbell wins gold in the decathlon while Rafer Johnson takes silver. A very young sprinter, Wilma Rudolph wins bronze in the 400-meter relay. Read more...

Frank Robinson, an outfielder for the Cincinnati Reds, is the first player to be unanimously voted Rookie of the Year in the National League. Read more...

Under the protection of National Guard troops, African American students enter the public school in Clay, Kentucky. Read more...

Nell Cecilia Jackson is head coach of the U.S. women's track and field team at the Olympic Games in Melbourne, Australia; she is the first black person to serve as head coach of the U.S. Olympic team. Jackson is head coach again at the 1972 Olympic Game. Read more...

Montgomery Bus Boycott ends a year after it began with the integration of the city's buses. Read more...

Earlene Brown wins the South Pacific Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) shotput title. Read more...

Ella Baker, Stanley Levison, and Bayard Rustin found the northern-based organization In Friendship, to help raise funds for the southern civil rights struggle. Read more...

White resistance to integration grows; segregationists use various strategies to circumvent court rulings, including shutting down public schools and establishing private schools. Read more...

The Negro in American Culture, by Margaret Just Butcher, is published. The work traces the contributions of black people to American folk and formal culture.

Jackie Robinson, who desegregated baseball, is appointed vice president of the Chock Full O'Nuts Corporation, one of the first black men in the country to break into the upper echelons of corporate America. Read more...

Governor Orval Faubus blocks nine black students from entering Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. President Eisenhower orders federal troops to the area to provide protection for the nine students; the troops withdraw after two months, but the National Guard remains in Little Rock until the end of the school year in 1958. Read more...

The Famous Ward Singers (Clara Ward, Marian Williams, and Henrietta Waddy) are the first gospel group to sing at the Newport Jazz Festival. Read more...

Hank Aaron, who plays outfielder for the Milwaukee Braves, wins the National League Most Valuable Player; the Braves defeat the Yankees in the World Series. Read more...

Jim Brown, a Syracuse University football star, also stars on the lacrosse team and becomes first black to play in the college North-South Game where he scores five goals and has two assists, as North beats South, 14 to 10. Read more...

Ghana gains its independence; Kwame Nkrumah becomes president. Read more...

Martin Luther King Jr. receives the Spingarn Medal. Read more...

New York City passes the nation's first fair-housing legislation, banning racial discrimination on the basis of race or religion. Read more...

In South Carolina, Allen University becomes the first African American college to invest with a black-owned brokerage firm. Read more...

Althea Gibson playing with a white British partner becomes the first black to win a tournament at Wimbledon, as she and her partner win the Women's doubles competition. She also becomes the first black woman to win a grand slam tournament, taking the French Open. Read more...

The Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) is established and headed by Martin Luther King Jr., who advocates a combined strategy of nonviolent direct action, litigation, economic boycotts, and voter registration to challenge Jim Crow laws. Ella Baker is the organizer of the central office. Read more...

Ebony Fashion Fair stages its first tour; in the following decades, it grows into the world's largest traveling fashion show. Read more...

Congress passes the Civil Rights Act of 1957, the first such legislation since Reconstruction, giving the attorney general greater authority to handle interference with school desegregation; the Civil Rights Act also establishes a new Civil Rights Commission and provides that suits regarding black disfranchisement be heard in federal courts instead of state courts. Read more...

The combined assets of African American banks total $46,789,607.

As the first African American sales representative for a major white-owned insurance company, Cirilo A. McSween is the first African American to sell $1 million in life insurance polices for any insurance company, African American or white, in a calendar year.

African Americans begin a boycott of city stores in Tuskegee, Alabama, to protest the redrawing of city boundaries that deprives them of the right to vote in city elections.

Herbert Simmons publishes Corner Boy, a protest novel tracing the lives of young black men who aspire to escape ghetto poverty. Read more...

Malcolm X founds Muhammad Speaks, a Muslim newspaper. Read more...

Roy Campanella is injured in an auto accident ending his careerRead more...

Bill Russell, the Boston Celtics center, becomes the first African American to be named NBA most valuable player. Read more...

Guinea becomes independent. Read more...

Nina Simone's first album, Jazz as Played in an Exclusive Side Street Club debuts. The single released from that recording, featuring "I Loves You, Porgy" and the B-side "He Needs Me," becomes a national R&B hit the following year, selling over a million copies. Read more...

Ella Fitzgerald wins two awards at the first Grammy award ceremony. She wins Best Female Vocal Performance for the Irving Berlin Songbook album and Best Individual Jazz Performance for the Duke Ellington Songbook album. Read more...

Ernie Banks, the Chicago Cubs second baseman, wins the National League Most Valuable Player. Read more...

Orlando Cepeda, a black Latino from Puerto Rico, is unanimously named Rookie of the Year playing first base for the San Francisco Giants. Read more...

Spingarn Medal is awarded to Daisy Bates and the Little Rock Nine—the African American students who integrated Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. Read more...

The Detroit Tigers are the next-to-last major league team to integrate, when they sign Ozzie Virgil. Read more...

Arthur B. Knight (vice president of Unity Mutual Life Insurance Company and Unity Funeral Parlor) and Roi Ottley (author and journalist) are among the first African Americans appointed to the board of directors of a white-owned corporation, when they join the board of Drexel National Bank in Chicago.

The Small Business Investment Company (SBIC) Act encourages entrepreneurs to start small business investment firms.

Jeanne Craig Sinkford at Howard University becomes the first black woman to direct a dental school.

Don Peppers is the first African American to play on the South lacrosse team in the annual North-South game.

Willie O'Ree joins the Boston Bruins and is the first black to play in the National Hockey League.

Martin Luther King Jr. publishes Stride Toward Freedom, his recollections of the Montgomery bus boycott that lasted from 1955 to 1956. He is later stabbed in Harlem by an African American woman while promoting the book. Read more...

W.C. Handy dies. Read more...

Elizabeth Catlett heads the sculpture department of the National School of Fine Arts at the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico. Read more...

Dorothy Dandridge wins the Golden Globe Award for best actress in a musical for her role in the film Porgy and Bess. Read more...

The race car driver Wendell Oliver Scott wins the Virginia State Championship. Read more...

Lena Frances Edwards, MD, subsidizes the founding of Our Lady of Guadeloupe Maternity Clinic in Hereford, Texas, to provide medical services to migrant workers. Read more...

Paule Marshall publishes her first novel, Brown Girl, Brownstones. Read more...

Winning the election for county court judge in Philadelphia, Juanita Kidd Stout is the first black woman elected to a judgeship in the United States. Read more...

African American farm ownership declines significantly, falling to 272,541, from 926,000 farms in 1920. Black farmers primarily grow cotton and tobacco. Read more...

Ernie Banks of the Chicago Cubs wins the National League Most Valuable Player for the second year in a row. This is the seventh year in a row that a black player has won the award. Read more...

Willie McCovey, the San Franciso Giants first baseman, is unanimously chosen Rookie of the Year. McCovey is the ninth black player to win the Rookie of the Year award since Jackie Robinson entered the league and won the award in 1947. Read more...

For the second year in a row Althea Gibson wins the USTA championship at Forest Hills and the women's singles at Wimbledon. She is the first black player to be ranked number one in the nation and the world. Read more...

In Detroit, Berry Gordy begins Motown Records. Motown Records will become arguably the most important black record company. Read more...

The black heavyweight champion Floyd Patterson loses the title to the Swedish boxer Ingemar Johansson. Read more...

Ernest Green graduates from Little Rock Central High School with 600 white classmates. Read more...

Prince Edward County, Virginia, closes its public schools to avoid integrating them; the Supreme Court will rule against this action and order the schools to reopen on an integrated basis. Read more...

College students begin holding sit-ins at segregated eating facilities in St. Louis, Chicago, and other U.S. citiesRead more...

Herman J. Russell organizes H. J. Russell and Company in Atlanta; it grows to be the largest and most successful black-owned construction and development company in the country.

A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry opens at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre, becoming the first play by an African American woman to be performed on Broadway. Awarded the New York Drama Critics Circle Award, Hansberry is the first black playwright, the youngest person, and the fifth woman to win the award. Read more...

Billie Holiday dies at age forty-four. Read more...

The Boston Red Sox of the American League are the last major league baseball team to integrate when the team signs Elijah “Pumpsie” Green. Read more...

Wilt “the Stilt” Chamberlain is named the NBA Rookie of the Year and Most Valuable Player. This is the beginning of a thirteen-year run in which African Americans will win the Most Valuable Player award. Chamberlain will win it again in 1968, 1969, and 1970. Bill Russell of the Celtics will win it in 1961, 1962, 1963, and 1965. Other winners in this period are Oscar Robertson (1964); Wes Unseld (1969); Willis Reed (1970); and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (1971, 1972). Read more...

After gaining, losing, and regaining the middleweight title between 1955 and 1960, Sugar Ray Robinson permanently loses the title. Read more...

Independence is won in Cameroon, Chad, Congo, Dahomey (Benin), Gabon, Côte D'Ivoire, Madagascar, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Somalia, Togo, and Upper Volta (Burkina Faso). Read more...

Frank Howard, the Los Angeles Dodgers outfielder, is named Rookie of the YearRead more...

Syracuse University's integrated football team, led by Ernie Davis, defeats the segregated University of Texas football team in the Cotton Bowl. This is the first time that a bowl game in the deep South features black stars and the first time a segregated team from the deep South is forced to play against black players and is beaten by them. Read more...

Elijah Muhammad, leader of the Nation of Islam, calls for the formation of a black state. Read more...

The Negro American League disbands, as do the remaining Negro League baseball teams. Read more...

Blacks star in the summer Olympics in Rome, especially in track and field, where they win eleven gold, three silver, and three bronze medals. Rafer Johnson, who carries the American flag in opening ceremonies when U.S. athletes march into the stadium, sets a new record in the decathlon, winning the gold medal. Wilma Rudolph leads the women's track team with three gold medals (the first American woman to do so) while setting a new world record in the 100-meter dash. Ralph Boston wins gold and sets a new record in long jump. Cassius M. Clay Jr. wins the gold medal in boxing and returns to the United States a hero. After turning pro, Clay will convert to Islam, take the name Muhammad Ali, and become the most famous boxer in the world. In basketball the team is led by a black star, Oscar Robertson, and a white star, Jerry West. Read more...

With support from CORE, student sit-ins are staged in fifteen southern cities, beginning in Greensboro, North Carolina; although about 1,500 protestors are arrested and mob violence occurs, the movement successfully integrates lunch counters in Texas and throughout the South. Read more...

The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) is founded. Read more...

Of all black women in the labor force, 32.5 percent are employed in domestic service, 21.4 percent are in other service positions, 10.8 percent are in clerical and sales, and 6 percent are in professional positions. Read more...

President Eisenhower signs the Civil Rights Act of 1960, prohibiting the intimidation of black voters and authorizing judges to appoint referees to oversee black voter registration. Read more...

Martin Luther King Jr. is arrested at a student protest in Atlanta, Georgia; the presidential candidate John F. Kennedy intervenes to secure King's release from jail. Read more...

Charles F. Harris, an editor at Doubleday, begins Zenith Books, a series of histories of minorities for the general and educational markets.

Fuller Grody of Detroit becomes the first black professional bowler on the PBA tour.

Black population of the United States is 18,871,831, or 10.5 percent of the total population. There are 9,758,423 women.

Gwendolyn Brooks publishes the poetry collection The Bean Eaters, in which she calls for political activism. Read more...

John A. Williams publishes his first novel, The Angry Ones. Read more...

Abele Bikele wins the Marathon in the 1960 Rome Olympics. He is the first black sub-Saharan African to win an Olympic Gold Medal.

The novelist, essayist, and political activist Richard Wright dies. Read more...

Syracuse University star Ernie Davis become the first black to win the Heisman Trophy as outstanding offensive college football player of the year. He dies of leukemia two years later. Read more...

James Farmer, CORE director, joins an interracial group of Freedom Riders to begin a bus trip through the South; the bus is bombed in Anniston, Alabama. Read more...

The opera star Leontyne Price makes her debut at the Metropolitan Opera House in Il Trovatore and receives a forty-two-minute ovation, one of the longest in Met history. Read more...

Wendell Oliver Scott becomes first black to race on the Grand National autoracing circuit. Read more...

President John Kennedy names Thurgood Marshall to the U.S. Court of Appeals. Read more...

Rwanda, Sierra Leone, and Tanganyika gain their independence. Read more...

Billy Williams, a Chicago Cubs outfielder, is the National League Rookie of the Year. Read more...

Black and white civil rights activists initiate the Freedom Rides, traveling on buses into the South to test compliance with the Interstate Commerce Commission's desegregation order. The Freedom Riders face physical assault and legal harassment; Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy sends U.S. marshals to protect the safety of the riders. In Rock Hill, South Carolina, the “Rock Hill Four,” including Ruby Doris Smith, refuse to pay their trespassing fines and remain in jail, initiating the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee's “jail no bail” policy. Read more...

The Professional Golf Association (PGA) allows blacks to compete in tournaments for the first time. Read more...

Federal courts order Charlayne Hunter and Hamilton Holmes admitted to the University of Georgia. Read more...

Frank Robinson, outfielder for the Cincinnati Reds, wins the National League Most Valuable Player. Read more...

Helene Hillyer Hale becomes Hawaii's county chairperson, a position equivalent to mayor. Read more...

Ellen Stewart (“La Mama”) founds the La Mama Experimental Theater Club, an off-off-Broadway theater in New York City. Read more...

Margaret Burroughs, with her husband, Charles, establishes the Ebony Museum of African American History in her Southside Chicago home; the museum becomes the DuSable Museum of African American History. Read more...

John McLendon is the first black coach of an integrated professional basketball team, the Cleveland Pipers of the American Basketball League.

Governor John Patterson declares martial law in Montgomery, Alabama.

Police use dogs and tear gas on demonstrators in Baton Rouge, Louisiana; Supreme Court reverses the conviction of sixteen students arrested during sit-ins in Baton Rouge.

The writer and activist Leroi Jones (later Amiri Baraka) publishes Preface to a 20 Volume Suicide Note, a collection of verse. Influenced by the Beat writers, Baraka explores such themes as alienation and racial identity. Read more...

Supported by SCLS, SNCC, NAACP, and CORE, the Albany Movement is organized to end discrimination in all public facilities in Albany, Georgia; led by Martin Luther King Jr. many demonstrators are beaten and jailed, including Dr. King. Read more...

The Supremes (Florence Ballard, Diana Ross, and Mary Wilson) make their chart debut with “Let Me Go the Right Way.” Read more...

The civil rights activist Daisy Bates publishes Long Shadow of Little Rock. Read more...

Audrey Forbes Manley becomes the first black woman appointed to the position of chief resident at Cook County Children's Hospital, Chicago. Read more...

Edith S. Sampson becomes the first black woman judge in the United States. Read more...

James Meredith enrolls in the University of Mississippi over the objections of Governor Ross Barnett; rioting erupts when federal marshals escort Meredith to classes. Read more...

Jackie Robinson is elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in his first year of eligibility. Read more...

Wilt Chamberlain scores 100 points against the New York Knicks, the most points ever scored by a player in one game. In 2006, Kobe Bryant of the Los Angeles Lakers will score 81, the second highest ever. Read more...

Algeria, Burundi, and Uganda become independent. Read more...

Maury Willis, the Los Angeles Dodgers shortstop, wins the National League Most Valuable Player. Read more...

Charlie Sifford becomes the first black golfer on the PGA tour. Read more...

Four black mothers stage a sit-in at a Chicago elementary school to protest de facto segregation, unequal facilities, double shifts, and mobile classrooms; nearly 250,000 people boycott the Chicago school system to protest segregation. Read more...

The Ku Klux Klan bombs and destroys four black churches in Georgia. Read more...

PepsiCo's Harvey Clarence Russell Jr. is the first African American to be appointed vice president of an international corporation.

Ed Dwight becomes first black astronaut, and is featured on the covers of Ebony and Jet. He is never given the opportunity to go into space and resigns in 1966.

Voter Registration School opens in Pike Country, Mississippi, marking the first such effort in the state's history.

Charles Perry’s first novel, Portrait of a Young Man Drowning, is published. With allusions to James Joyce’s Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man, the story draws upon Perry’s extensive research on juvenile delinquents and gangsters in tracing the life of an Irish American who becomes involved in the underworld of Brooklyn, New York. Read more...

James Baldwin publishes Another Country, a novel set in New York, Paris, and Alabama that explores how characters in each place resolve issues of sexual and racial identity. Read more...

The journalist and historian Lerone Bennett Jr. publishes Before the Mayflower: A History of the Negro in America, 1619–1962. The work becomes a best-seller and is published in many editions. Read more...

Robert Hayden’s second collection of poetry, A Ballad of Remembrance, is published. In 1966 it will win the Grand Prix de la Poesie (Grand Prize for Poetry) at the First World Festival of Negro Arts held in Dakar, Senegal, and Hayden will be named poet laureate of Senegal. Read more...

William Melvin Kelley wins the Richard and Hinda Rosenthal Foundation Award for his first novel, Different Drummer, which documents the courage of the former slave Tucker Caliban. Read more...

Arthur R. Ashe Jr., a tennis star at UCLA, becomes the first black player on the U.S. Davis Cup team. Read more...

Marian Anderson is awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Lyndon B. Johnson. Read more...

Elston Howard, the New York Yankees catcher, becomes the first black to be named the American League Most Valuable Player. Read more...

The Basketball Hall of Fame enshrines “the Rens”, the New York team named for Harlem's Renaissance Casino, an all-black team that played from 1922 to 1949, winning more than 2,500 games while losing fewer than 600. The Rens barnstormed around the country during a period when white professional teams would not accept black players. Read more...

James Baldwin publishes The Fire Next Time, an indictment of racial injustice and a powerful warning of the coming chaos of racial violence and hatred. Read more...

Along with about 2,000 other demonstrators, Martin Luther King Jr. is arrested in Birmingham, Alabama. From his jail cell, King responds to his critics with the twenty-page “Letter from Birmingham Jail.” The essay, using prison as a metaphor for life under segregation, presents a complex argument against segregation and a defense of his strategies to dismantle it. The essay becomes one of the most widely read and significant writings of the twentieth century. Read more...

Jomo Kenyatta becomes head of state in independent Kenya; Zanzibar gains its independence; FRELIMO begins an armed struggle for the liberation of Mozambique; Organization of African Unity is established.

James Phillip McQuay is the first African American in wholesale and retail fur manufacturing. McQuay's fur manufacturing business in New York will win fur industry designer awards in 1970, 1975, and 1976.

Leslie N. Shaw is appointed postmaster general of Los Angeles. Shaw is the first African American to hold the position in a major U.S. city.

President Kennedy calls on Congress to strengthen voting rights and create job opportunities for African Americans.

Police use dogs and fire hoses to attack civil rights marchers.

W. E. B. Du Bois dies in Ghana at the age of ninety-five. Like Frederick Douglass and Booker T. Washington before him, Du Bois was in many ways the most powerful and influential black man of his day. Read more...

NAACP field secretary Medgar Evers is assassinated outside his house in Jackson, Mississippi; the man suspected of shooting him, Bryon De La Beckwith, is tried twice, with hung juries on both occasions, but finally convicted at a third trial in 1994. Read more...

Addie Mae Collins, Denise McNair, Carole Robertson, and Cynthia Wesley are murdered while attending Sunday school at the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, when the church is bombed by white racists opposing civil rights activists in the city. Read more...

Martin Luther King Jr. delivers his “I Have a Dream” speech during the March on Washington. The same year, he publishes Strength to Love, a collection of his sermons. Read more...

President Kennedy is assassinated in Dallas, Texas.

Cassius Clay (later Muhammad Ali) defeats Sonny Liston for the heavyweight boxing title. Read more...

Wendell Oliver Scott become the first black driver to win a NASCAR race, the NASCAR GN 100-mile race at Jacksonville, Florida. Read more...

Three civil rights workers—James Chaney, Michael Schwerner, and Andrew Goodman—are murdered near Philadelphia, Mississippi; by the end of the year, the civil rights struggle in the state will have resulted in three deaths, eighty beatings, and the bombing of more than sixty churches, homes, and other buildings. Read more...

In response to international pressure, South Africa is banned from Olympic competition. Read more...

Marian Anderson receives the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Johnson. Read more...

Lena Frances Edwards, MD, receives the highest civilian award, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, from President Lyndon B. Johnson, becoming the only obstetrician-gynecologist, before or since, to be so honored. Read more...

Constance Baker Motley becomes the first black woman elected to the New York State Senate. Read more...

Sidney Poitier receives an Oscar for his performance in Lilies of the Field. Read more...

Malcolm X breaks with the Black Muslim movement to develop his own philosophy regarding the civil rights struggle and to found the Organization of Afro-American Unity. Read more...

Nelson Mandela is tried and convicted in South Africa; Tanganyike and Zanzibar join to form Tanzania; Malawi and Zambia become independent; Hutus overthrow Tutsi rule in Burundi. Read more...

The Supremes have their first number-one hit with “Where Did Our Love Go.” Read more...

The poet and playwright Leroi Jones (later Amiri Baraka) establishes the Black Arts Repertory Theater School in Harlem; Jones receives an Obie Award for his play Dutchman. He also publishes a volume of poetry, Dead Lecturer, which represents his departure from the apolitical Beats and signifies his burgeoning commitment to revolutionary activism.. Read more...

Anna Arnold Hedgeman publishes her autobiography and assessment of black leadership, The Trumpet Sounds. Read more...

Dick “Richie” Allen, the Philadelphia Phillies third baseman is named Rookie of the Year. Read more...

The St. Louis Cardinals pitcher Bob Gibson becomes the first black player to win the World Series Most Valuable Player award. Read more...

In golf Peter Brown wins the Waco Open. Read more...

Race riots occur throughout the United States; a demonstration again police brutality in New York City turns violent, spreading to the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn. Read more...

The Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP) is founded. Annie Devine, Fannie Lou Hamer, Anna Mae King, Unita Blackwell, and others representing the party confront Democratic Party leaders at the Atlantic City national convention, where Hamer testifies before the credentials committee and a national television audience about the physical violence she and others suffered when they attempted to vote. Read more...

Oliver “Butch” Martin becomes the first African American to win a place on the U.S. Olympic cycling team. Joe Frazier wins the gold medal in heavyweight boxing. In track and field black athletes win eleven gold medals, eight silver medals, and one bronze; they break six world records. In three other events they break Olympic records. Robert Douglas and Charles Tribble become the first blacks on a U.S. Olympic wrestling team. Read more...

Appearing on the cover of Harper's Bazaar, Donyale Luna becomes the first African American model to appear on the cover of a mainstream U.S. fashion magazine. Read more...

Alma Jacobs is the first African American to become a member of the executive board of the American Library Association. Read more...

President Lyndon Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act of 1964, increasing the authority of the attorney general to protect citizens against discrimination; the legislation denies federal funds to programs that discriminate and establishes the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Read more...

Martin Luther King Jr. receives the Nobel Peace Prize. Read more...

Alvin Boutte and George E. Johnson establish the Independence Bank of Chicago. Among their depositers are major white-owned corporations like CBS, Chrysler, General Motors, Johnson and Johnson, and Delta Airlines and successful black-owned corporations like Johnson Publishing.

Clifton W. Gates, M. Leo Bohanon, and James Hurt of the Urban League; Howard Woods of the St. Louis Argus; and other prominent African American investors establish the first black-owned bank in Missouri, Gateway National Bank.

Edward Gardner founds Soft Sheen Products, an ethnic hair care manufacturer.

The Twenty-fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution eliminates the poll tax for federal elections.

Ernest Gaines publishes his first novel, Catherine Carmier. Set in Louisiana, the book traces a doomed love story and explores the barriers not only between whites and African Americans, but also between African Americans and African Creoles. Read more...

Martin Luther King Jr. publishes Why We Can't Wait, in which he argues that poor whites and African Americans are natural allies that should work together to change society. Read more...

Rioting erupts in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles, resulting in 34 deaths, 1,032 injuries, and an estimated $35 million in property damage; the riot ushers in a period of violent confrontation in America's inner cities. Read more...

Patricia Roberts Harris becomes the first black woman to head a U.S. embassy when she is appointed ambassador to Luxembourg. Read more...

Willie Mays of the San Francisco Giants wins his second National League Most Valuable Player award. Read more...

Constance Baker Motley is elected president of the borough of Manhattan in New York, the highest elected office held by a black woman in a major U.S. city. Read more...

Fifty-nine-year-old Satchel Paige pitches three innings of shutout ball for the Kansas City Athletics. He is considered the oldest player to appear in a major league game. He was added to the Kansas City roster so he could qualify for a major league pension. Read more...

Arthur Ashe wins the NCAA men's tennis championship. Read more...

Led by Martin Luther King Jr., demonstrators attempt to march from Selma to the Alabama state capitol in Montgomery to call attention to voters' rights; state troopers block the path of the marchers on the Edmund Pettus Bridge and attack them with clubs and tear gas in what has come to be called “Bloody Sunday.” Under the protection of federal troops, marchers succeed in reaching the state capitol two days later. Read more...

Black players boycott the American Football League (AFL) all-star game because of rampant discrimination in New Orleans, where it is to be held. Pressure from black players forces the AFL to move the game to Houston. Read more...

Rhodesia declares its independence under Ian Smith; Mobuto Sese Seko takes power in Congo-Kinshasa and renames the country Zaire; King Hassan reestablishes the monarchy in Morocco; Gambia gains its independence. Read more...

Leontyne Price receives the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People's Spingarn Medal. Read more...

President Lyndon Johnson signs into law the Voting Rights Act of 1965, authorizing federal examiners to register African Americans wherever state officials have refused to do so. Read more...

Lucille Dixon is a founding member and manager of the Symphony of the New World. Read more...

Vivian Malone, the first African American student at the University of Alabama, graduates. Read more...

A consortium of African American entrepreneurs in Chicago's Southside establish the Seaway National Bank.

In Harlem, the first bank chartered and operated by African Americans, the Freedom National Bank, is established.

The National Association of Media Women is organized by Rhea Callaway.

Amiri Baraka (Leroi Jones) publishes his sole novel, System of Dante’s Hell, an autobiographical coming-of-age story with a structure borrowed from the Inferno. Read more...

Claude Brown publishes his autobiography Manchild in the Promised Land documenting life in an urban community. Read more...

Melvin B. Tolson publishes Harlem Gallery, Book 1: The Curator, a book of vignettes, conversations, philosophy, and commentary on the role of black artists, inspired by experiences in his art gallery in Harlem. Though the book is conceived as part of a series, Tolson will only publish the first volume. Read more...

The Autobiography of Malcolm X, written with Alex Haley, is published after the author’s assassination. A major literary achievement of the twentieth century, the work traces the evolution of Malcolm X’s political, philosophical, and religious perspectives on the African American experience. Read more...

Malcolm X is shot and killed as he delivers a speech to the Organization of Afro-American Unity at the Audubon Ballroom in New York City; several hundred followers, including his wife and young children, are present. Read more...

Bill Russell is named coach of the Boston Celtics; he is the first African American coach of a professional sports team. Read more...

Martin Luther King Jr. launches his Chicago campaign to call attention to discrimination in housing, jobs, and education in the North; rioting erupts in the city a few days later and the National Guard is mobilized to restore order in Chicago and elsewhere. Read more...

Barbara Charline Jordan becomes the first black woman in the Texas Senate; she is later elected to the U.S. House of Representatives and distinguishes herself during the Watergate hearings. Read more...

Edward Brooke of Massachusetts becomes the first African American senator since Reconstruction. Read more...

U.S. Senate confirms Constance Baker Motley as a district court judge; she is the first African American woman on the federal bench. Read more...

Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale found the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense in Oakland, California; the party soon expands to become a national organization. Read more...

Lesotho and Botswana gain their independence. Read more...

Robert Weaver is named secretary of housing and urban development, becoming the first African American cabinet member. Read more...

Julian Bond is denied a seat on the Georgia legislature because of his opposition to the Vietnam War. Read more...

Tommie Lee Agee, the Chicago White Sox outfielder, becomes the first African American Rookie of the Year in the American League. Read more...

CORE votes to endorse the concept of “black power,” while the NAACP publicly disavows the concept. Read more...

Roberto Clemente, the black Latino outfielder for the Pittsburgh Pirates, wins the National League Most Valuable Player. Read more...

Ted Williams, perhaps the greatest hitter in baseball history, is inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame. In his speech Williams, who is white, congratulates Willie Mays on passing Williams on the list of all-time homerun hitters. Then, in a startling statement, Williams declares: “Baseball gives every American boy a chance to excel. Not just to be as good as anybody else, but to be better. This is the nature of man and the name of the game. I hope some day Satchel Paige and Josh Gibson will be voted into the Hall of Fame as symbols of the great Negro players who are not here only because they weren't given the chance.” Read more...

Frank Robinson of the Baltimore Orioles become the first and only (as of 2006) black to win baseball's Triple Crown, leading the league in hitting average, homeruns, and runs batted in (RBIs). He is unanimously voted the American League Most Valuable Player. He is the second African American in the American League to win this award and the first to be unanimously chosen. The same season, Robinson is named the World Series Most Valuable Player. Robinson will become the only player to win the Most Valuable Player in both the American and National leagues. Read more...

Ruby Doris Smith-Robinson is elected executive secretary of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), the only woman to hold that position. Read more...

The SNCC spokesman Stokely Carmichael launches the Black Power Movement at a civil rights rally in Mississippi. Read more...

The White House Conference on Civil Rights convenes; 2,400 people attend. Read more...

As part of the Small Business Adminstration's venture-capital program, the Minority Enterprise Small Business Investment Company is founded.

Forty-five percent of all college teams have at least one black player.

Emmett Ashford becomes the first African American umpire in Major League Baseball.

The Texas Western University basketball team, fielding an all-black starting lineup, defeats the all-white University of Kentucky team to win the NCAA national championship. It is the first time an all-black team defeats an all-white team, disproving the claim that blacks players cannot win without a white “leader” on the court. The coach of Kentucky, the legendary Adolph Rupp, had refused to allow black players on his team.

Amiri Baraka (Leroi Jones) publishes Home: Social Essays, which chronicles the increasingly nationalistic politics of the author. It also reflects a growing impatience with gradualism, as African Americans continue to experience slow to no progress in civil rights and social equality. Read more...

George “Hal” Bennett’s first novel, A Wilderness of Vines, is published. Set in pre-World War II Virginia, the work describes a community in which racial status takes on the zealotry of a religion. Read more...

Margaret Walker publishes the novel Jubilee, which was originally her doctoral dissertation. The book is both a transcription of the oral history of her great-grandmother and a broad depiction of the South during the Civil War era. Read more...

Robert Hayden publishes Selected Poems, further establishing himself as a major figure in American poetry. Read more...

Adam Clayton Powell Jr. is expelled from the House of Representatives for alleged improprieties; he wins a special election to fill his own seat and returns to the House two years later. He is eventually defeated by Charles Rangel in 1970. Read more...

Bill Russell is the first black NBA coach when he becomes player-coach of the Boston Celtics, and leads team to NBA championships in 1968 and 1969. Read more...

Aretha Franklin signs with Atlantic Records and releases I Never Loved a Man (the Way I Loved You). Read more...

Nominated by President Johnson, and confirmed by the Senate, Thurgood Marshall becomes the nation's first black associate justice of the Supreme Court. Read more...

Muhammad Ali is stripped of his heavyweight title for refusing to be drafted. Read more...

Kathleen Cleaver becomes communications secretary for the Black Panther Party. Read more...

Carl Stokes of Cleveland, Ohio, becomes the first black mayor of a major American city. Read more...

Orlando Cepeda, the St. Louis Cardinals first baseman, unanimously wins the National League Most Valuable Player award. Read more...

The black Latino Rod Carew is named the American League Rookie of the YearRead more...

The pitcher Bob Gibson of the St. Louis Cardinals is chosen as the World Series Most Valuable Player. Read more...

In a unanimous vote, the U.S. Supreme Court rules in Loving v. Virginia that the state's antimiscegenation law is unconstitutional, nullifying all remaining similar laws in fifteen other states. Read more...

The founding convention of the National Welfare Rights Organization (NWRO) is held, with Johnnie Tillmon as chair, Etta Horn as first vice chair, Beulah Saunders as second vice chair, Edith Doering as secretary, and Marian Kidd as treasurer. Read more...

Jesse Jackson is appointed national director of Operation Breadbasket in the hope that his leadership will increase employment and promote entrepreneurship among blacks. Read more...

Biafra attempts to secede from Nigeria; Swaziland becomes independent; Muammar al-Qaddafi seizes power in Libya. Read more...

Martin Luther King Jr. announces his opposition to the Vietnam War, alienating some of his strongest supporters in government, including President Johnson. Read more...

Renee Powell is the first black woman to join the Ladies Professional Golf Association (LPGA) tour. Read more...

Nannie Mitchell Turner receives the Distinguished Editor Award from the National Newspaper Publishers Association. Read more...

Helen Natalie Jackson Claytor becomes the first African American to serve as national president of the Young Women's Christian Association (YWCA). Read more...

Albert William Johnson is awarded the first dealership from a major automaker to an African American. He opens his Oldsmobile dealership in a predominantly African American neighborhood in Chicago.

The Urban Arts Corps, an inner-city theater program to showcase performers of color, is founded in New York City by Vinnette Carroll, who serves as its artistic director.

Winston-Salem State becomes the first HBCU to win an NCAA title in basketball, the Division II championship.

Major Robert Lawrence becomes the second African American astronaut.

Amiri Baraka (Leroi Jones) publishes Tales, a collection of short stories that are a call for revolutionary uprising. Read more...

Ishmael Reed’s first novel The Free-Lance Pall Bearers, is published. It is a parody of Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, and establishes Reed as a satirical critic of the black literary tradition. Read more...

John A. Williams’s book The Man Who Cried I Am is published. It is a fictionalized account of the retraction by the American Academy of Arts and Letters of the Prix de Rome prize after an interview with him. Williams is the only winner to have his prize retracted by the academy. Read more...

John E. Wideman publishes his first novel A Glance Away, the first of a body of work that explores tensions between African ancestry and the dominance of European culture and ideas. Read more...

Martin Luther King Jr. is assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee, where he is assisting sanitation workers on strike; rioting occurs in 125 cities in the weeks that follow. His alleged assassin, James Earl Ray, is arrested in London. Read more...

Despite their outstanding performances in the 200-meter sprint, John Carlos and teammate Tommie Smith are stripped of their medals and ejected from the Olympic Village for raising their gloved hands in the Black Power salute while the national anthem plays. Read more...

With the premiere of Julia, Diahann Carroll becomes the first black star of a television situation comedy. Read more...

The attorney Marian Wright Edelman is the congressional and federal agency liaison for the Poor Peoples' Campaign, which brings an estimated 50,000 demonstrators to Washington, D.C. Read more...

The longest-running drama of the 1968-1969 off-Broadway season is To Be Young, Gifted, and Black, adapted posthumously from the unpublished writings of Lorraine Hansberry. Read more...

Clothhilde Dent Brown becomes the first African American woman to be promoted to the rank of colonel in the U.S. Army. Read more...

Arthur Ashe wins his first U.S. Open in tennis and leads the U.S. Davis Cup team to an international victory. Read more...

Fannie Lou Hamer, Dessie Lee Patterson, and twenty other Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP) members unseat the regular delegation to the National Democratic Convention in Chicago. Read more...

Huey Newton, co-founder of the Black Panther Party, is tried and convicted of the shooting death of a white policeman; several months later, three members of the Black Panthers are arrested and charged with carrying out a machine-gun attack on a police station in Jersey City. Read more...

Record numbers of African American congressmen (and the first black congresswoman, Shirley Chisholm from New York's Twelfth Congressional District) are elected. Read more...

Edward Lewis and Clarence O. Smith start publishing Essence magazine, focusing on beauty, health, and self-improvement. With a future monthly readership of over 7.6 million, it will become the most successful black women's magazine in the world. Read more...

The St. Louis Cardinals pitcher Bob Gibson is named National League Most Valuable Player. Gibson is also unanimously awarded the National League Cy Young Award. Read more...

Kerner Commission warns that America is becoming “two societies—one black, one white—separate and unequal.” Read more...

Despite controversies, blacks dominate track and field events at the Olympics, winning 19 gold, 13 silver, and 4 bronze medals. Including members of relay teams, blacks set 16 new world records and 19 Olympic records. Robert Douglas served as captain of the entire Olympic team and wins the gold in freestyle wrestling. Read more...

Harold Hunter becomes the first black to serve as a coach (though not the head coach) of a U.S. Olympic basketball team. Hunter had been the first black to sign with an NBA team in 1950, but was cut from the team before the season. Though five blacks (including the future NBA star Jo Jo White) play on the team, a significant number of black college and future NBA stars boycott the games to protest racism in the United States, including Lew Alcindor (Kareem Abdul-Jabbar), Elvin Hayes, Bob Lanier and Wes Unseld. Read more...

Operation PUSH (People United to Save Humanity), is started by Jesse Jackson. The organization promotes African American entrepreneurship by conducting business-oriented seminars and trade show expositions. Read more...

Jim Hines becomes the first sprinter to break ten seconds in the 100-meter dash; he sets the new world record. Read more...

The National Domestic Workers Union is founded in Atlanta, under the leadership of Dorothy Lee Bolden. Read more...

Naomi Sims is the first black woman to appear on the cover of Ladies' Home Journal; the next year she is the first black woman on the cover of Life. Read more...

Barbara M. Watson, the first woman to be assistant secretary of state, becomes the first woman to be the administrator of the Bureau of Security and Consular Affairs of the U.S. State Department. Read more...

Madeline Manning wins a gold medal in the 800-meter race in the Mexico City Olympics and later participates in the 1972 and 1976 Olympics. Read more...

Gwendolyn Brooks becomes poet laureate of Illinois. Read more...

Fortune magazine reports that African American consumers spend $30 billion annually.

Progress Plaza, the first major shopping center developed by an African American, opens in Philadelphia. Leon Howard Sullivan is responsible for the center's creation.

The National Negro Business League reports that African Americans own or control more than 50,000 businesses.

Under McGeorge Bundy, the Ford Foundation awards major grants to two African American business development agencies: $520,000 to the Negro Industrial and Economic Union in Cleveland, Ohio, and $400,000 to the Bedford-Stuyvesant Development and Services Corporation in Brooklyn, New York.

Elizabeth Duncan Koontz becomes the first African American to serve as president of the National Education Association (NEA).

In Southeast Conference (SEC) there are only eleven African Americans on athletic scholarships. There are no black players on college teams from Alabama, Auburn, Florida, Mississippi, Mississippi State, LSU, and Georgia.

Myrtis Dightman of Crockett, Texas is ranked third in bullriding by the Professional Rodeo Cowboy Association for the second year in a row.

Alice Walker publishes her first volume of poetry, Once, which includes poems written during a summer she spent in Africa. Read more...

Audre Lorde publishes her first volume of poetry, First Cities; the poems are a break from the overtly black-nationalist poetry of the time. Read more...

Eldridge Cleaver publishes Soul on Ice, a collection of essays and prison writing that becomes central to the literature of the Black Nationalist movement. Read more...

Ernest Gaines publishes Bloodline; written in the first person, the collection of five short stories reveal the need for social change. Read more...

Julius Lester publishes his first book, Look Out, Whitey! Black Power’s Gon’ Get Your Mama. Lester also compiles To Be a Slave, a collection of passages from slave narratives, with illustrations by Tom Feelings. Read more...

Nikki Giovanni publishes her first collection of poems, Black Feeling, Black Talk. The work features explosive political and revolutionary themes as well as intimate and personal ones; her poems are performed, often in combination with gospel music.

Senator Robert Kennedy, former attorney general and champion of civil rights, is assassinated as he leaves a rally celebrating his victory in the California Democratic primary.

Roy Campanella becomes the second black elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame. Read more...

Coretta Scott King establishes the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change in Atlanta, Georgia. Read more...

The South African government denies a visa to the tennis champion Arthur Ashe, preventing him from playing in the South Africa Open. Ashe begins a campaign to have South Africa expelled from international tennis. Read more...

Adam Clayton Powell Jr. returns to the House of Representatives, but is stripped of his seniority and fined $25,000 for alleged misuse of payroll funds and travel allowances. Read more...

John McLendon is named coach of the Denver Rockets in the American Basketball Association. Read more...

Moneta Sleet, who frequently photographs for Ebony magazine, receives a Pulitzer Prize; he is the first African American man to be so honored. Read more...

The New York Mets first baseman and Morehouse graduate Donn Clendenon is voted the World Series Most Valuable Player. Read more...

The San Francisco Giants first baseman Willie McCovey is named the National League Most Valuable Player. Read more...

African American members of the U.S. House of Representatives form the Congressional Black Caucus to address the concerns of black and minority citizens. Read more...

Charlie Sifford becomes the first black to win a major PGA tournament, the Los Angeles Open. Read more...

Nell C. Jackson becomes the first African American to sit on the U.S. Olympic Committee's board of directors and is inducted into the Black Athletes Hall of Fame in 1977 for her achievements as a track star and sports administrator. Read more...

Employed with WAGA-TV in Atlanta, Xernona Clayton (Brady) becomes the first black woman to host a television show in the South. Read more...

Clashes with police decimate the Black Panther Party leadership: Fred Hampton and Mark Clark are killed in a raid, Eldridge Cleaver goes into exile to avoid returning to prison, and Bobby Seale is arrested for conspiracy to incite rioting at the Democratic Convention in Chicago. Read more...

James Earl Ray pleads guilty to killing Martin Luther King Jr. although many people believe that Ray is the “fall guy” in a conspiracy organized by the government. Read more...

Lucille Clifton's first book of poems, Good Times, is published and chosen by the New York Times as one of the ten best books of the year. Read more...

Maya Angelou's first autobiography, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, is published. Her work demonstrates how individual experience is related to broader political movements and the community as a whole. Read more...

George Johnson incorporates Johnson Products Company, the largest African American hair care products manufacturer.

Henry Green Parks Jr. who started the Baltimore-based Parks Sausage Company in 1951, leads the first publicly traded black-owned company in the over-the-counter market.

In New York, nine African American accountants organized the National Association of Black Accountants (NABA).

James Bruce Llewellyn spearheads a leveraged buyout of the ten-store, white-owned, food store chain Fedco Foods in South Bronx, New York, for $3 million. Under Llewellyn's direction, the chain will grow to twenty-seven stores with $85 million in revenues.

One of the first African American fast food franchise owners is Brady Keys, a former all-pro defensive halfback for the Pittsburgh Steelers. He launches All-Pro Enterprises and buys Burger King and Kentucky Fried Chicken franchises. Keys also offers franchise opportunities to other African Americans through his company.

After being turned down for a job at fifty different white-owned ad agencies, Byron Lewis creates his own agency, UniWorld Group, Inc., in New York. He enjoys great success; among his corporate clients are Burger King, AT&T, Kodak, and Ford.

Under Executive Order 11458, President Richard Nixon creates the Office of Minority Business Enterprise in the Department of Commerce.

At age eighteen, Ruth White is the youngest woman and the first African American to win a national fencing championship; she holds four national titles.

Clara McBride “Mother” Hale opens Hale House in Harlem for babies of drug-addicted mothers.

Tina Sloane-Green is the first African American woman to compete on the U.S. National Lacrosse team.

Cecil Brown publishes his first novel Life and Loves of Mr. Jiveass Nigger; the work establishes his literary reputation.

Molefi Asante and Robert Singleton found the Journal of Black Studies at the University of California at Los Angeles.

Sonia Sanchez publishes Homecoming, her first volume of poetry.

Ralph Metcalfe, a 1936 Olympic gold medalist, is elected to the U.S. House of Representatives from Chicago's Southside. Read more...

Coretta Scott King dedicates the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Center, which includes his home, the Ebenezer Baptist Church, and the crypt that houses his remains. Read more...

Sporting News names the Boston Celtics center Bill Russell “Athlete of the Decade.” Read more...

Toni Cade (Bambara) edits and publishes the pioneering Black Woman: An Anthology. A collection of essays, short stories, and poetry by well-known writers and students in the New York City College SEEK Program, the work is considered the first major work on black contemporary feminism. Read more...

The activist and scholar Angela Davis is placed on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted list; after a nationwide police search, Davis is arrested and charged with murder, kidnapping, and conspiracy. Read more...

Toni Morrison's first novel, Bluest Eye, is published. Read more...

The poet Sonia Sanchez publishes We a BaddDDD People, her second collection of poems. Read more...

Alice Walker publishes her first novel, Third Life of Grange Copeland. The work examines issues of gender and race under the sharecropping system. Read more...

The tennis star Arthur Ashe wins Australian Open and French Open. Read more...

Earl Graves publishes Black Enterprise magazine to promote African American economic development. Read more...

Norma Holloway Johnson is confirmed to a seat on the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., after being nominated by President Richard Nixon. Read more...

The University of Southern California (USC) football team has a starting backfield that is entirely black. The team beats the segregated University of Alabama team 42 to 21. This is the first time that a Division I NCAA football team has an all-black backfield. One of the Alabama coaches later says that the USC fullback Sam Cunningham "did more to integrate Alabama in sixty minutes that night than Martin Luther King had accomplished in twenty years.. Read more...

Joe Frazier defeats Jimmy Ellis for the heavyweight boxing title. Read more...

Bombs destroy 30 percent of Denver's school buses in an attempt by segregationists to disrupt the city's integration plans. Read more...

President Richard Nixon extends the Voting Rights Act. Read more...

Civil and ethnic wars erupt across the African continent. Read more...

Lucille Clifton publishes her first children's book, Some of the Days of Everett Anderson. Read more...

A group of Masters of Business Administration students at the University of Chicago organizes the National Black MBA Association to promote professionalization in business among African Americans.

Out of 3,000 senior-level Fortune 500 executives, only three are black: Clifton Wharton Jr. at Equitable; Thomas Wood at Chase Manhattan; and Robert Weaver at Metropolitan Life.

Barbara Proctor founds the first black woman-owned advertising agency in Chicago, Proctor and Gardner Advertising, Inc. Her clients include Sears, Roebuck and E. J. Gallo Winery.

Joseph L. Searles III is the first African American to work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange.

Of 35,000 stock brokers in the country, only 60, or 0.001 percent, are African American.

Cheryl Brown, Miss Iowa, becomes the first black woman to compete in the Miss America pageant.

Of all black women in the labor force 17.5 percent are employed in domestic service, 25.7 percent are in other service positions, 23.4 percent are in sales and clerical positions, and 10.8 percent are in professional positions.

The Coalition of 100 Black Women is founded in New York.

Although it is not yet a national holiday, Martin Luther King's birthday is celebrated in many parts of the country.

Black population of the United States is 22,580,289, or 11.1 percent of the total population. There are 11,831,973 women.

Charles Godone wins the Pulitzer Prize for his play No Place to Go.

John Edgar Wideman publishes the novel Hurry Home. Read more...

The juvenile fiction writer Lucille Clifton publishes her first children’s book, Some of the Days of Everett Anderson, the beginning of a series with an inner-city black boy as the protagonist. Read more...

Louise Meriwether publishes her first novel, Daddy Was a Numbers Runner; the novel depicts the life of a black girl growing up in Harlem, New York, during the 1930s. Read more...

Mari Evans publishes I Am a Black Woman, a collection of poems concerning romantic love and social injustice. Read more...

Jimi Hendrix, a rock music innovator and superstar, dies of a drug overdose, depriving the world of a visionary artist whose work transcended the racial divisions of his time. Read more...

Louis “Satchmo” Armstrong dies. Read more...

Dr. Jane Cook Wright becomes the first woman president of the New York Cancer Society. Read more...

Angela Davis publishes the pioneering essay “Reflections on the Black Woman's Role in the Community of Slaves,” written from her prison cell. Read more...

Maya Angelou's screenplay Georgia, Georgia is made into a film starring Diana Sands, making Angelou the first black woman to have an original screenplay produced. Read more...

General Motors appoints Leon Sullivan to its board of directors, the first African American in the automobile industry to be so appointed. Read more...

Chris Chambliss, the Cleveland Indian first baseman, becomes the second African American Rookie of the Year in the American League. Read more...

Ferguson “Fergie” Jenkins, a black Canadian pitcher for the Chicago Cubs, wins the Cy Young Award. Read more...

Vida Blue, the Oakland Athletics pitcher, is named the American League Most Valuable Player. Vida Blue also wins the American League Cy Young award, becoming the first and (as of 2005) only American League black pitcher to win the award. Read more...

Wayne Embry of the NBA's Milwaukee Bucks becomes the first black general manager of a major sport team. Read more...

The Pittsburgh Pirates outfielder Roberto Clemente, a black Latino, is chosen as the World Series Most Valuable Player. Read more...

Members of the Congressional Black Caucus meet with President Richard Nixon to present sixty recommendations for governmental action on domestic and foreign issues; the president rejects the recommendations and twelve congressmen boycott Nixon's State of the Union address. Read more...

Abe Sapperstein, the founder of the Harlem Globetrotters, is inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame. Read more...

Lauranne B. Sams is a founding member of the National Black Nurses' Association and serves as its first president. Read more...

Over 800,000 people attend the “Black Expo,” a four-day exhibition sponsored by Jesse Jackson and Operation PUSH in Chicago. Read more...

Satchel Paige is elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame for his career in the Negro Leagues. He is the first of a number of Negro League players to be elected to the Hall of Fame. Read more...

Althea Gibson is inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame. Arhur Ashe wins the French Open for the second year in a row. Read more...

Aileen Hernandez is elected president of the National Organization for Women (NOW), the first African American woman to hold the position. Read more...

By a vote of 8 to 0, with Justice Thurgood Marshall abstaining, the U.S. Supreme Court overturns the draft evasion charges against Muhammad Ali, ruling that Ali, a Muslim, was objecting to military service on religious grounds. Ali returns to boxing. Read more...

When he takes over Eastern Airlines, James O. Plinton Jr. becomes the first African American to lead a major U.S. airline.

Daniels and Bell, a firm started by Willie L. Daniels and Travers Bell Jr. after being inspired by The Wiz, is the first African American company to become a member of the New York Stock Exchange.

Johnson Products Company, Inc., is the first black-owned company listed on the American Stock Exchange.

Melvin R. Wade is the first and only African American to own a rubber recycling plant, the Eastern Rubber Reclaiming Company in Chester, Pennsylvania.

Thomas Burrell founds Burrell Advertising of Chicago, which becomes the leading black-owned ad agency through the mid-1990s. Among Burrell's clients are Crest, Ford, Quaker Oats, Jack Daniels, Coca-Cola, and McDonald's.

The National Women's Political Caucus is founded.

Ernest Gaines publishes Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman. A historical novel drawn from slave narratives, it will become widely acclaimed. Read more...

John O. Killens publishes Cotillion; or, One Good Bull is Half the Herd, a novel that explores the dark aspects of the African American community. Read more...

Maya Angelou publishes a book of poetry, Just Give Me a Cool Drink of Water 'fore I Diiie. Read more...

Nikki Giovanni publishes her autobiography, Gemini: An Extended Autobiographical Statement on My First Twenty-Five Years of Being a Black Poet. Read more...

The Black Aesthetic, edited by the literary critic Addison Gayle, is published. It is a collection of essays by prominent African American writers and theorists discussing the Black Arts Movement. Read more...

The Pittsburgh Pirates field a team of nine black players; it is the first time in major league baseball that a starting line-up contains only black players. Some are African Americans, while others, like Roberto Clemente, are black Latinos. Read more...

U.S. Supreme Court rules against the St. Louis Cardinals star Curt Flood in his attempt to be declared a free agent so he can avoid being traded. Flood argues that baseball's reserve clause is tantamount slavery. The court disagrees, holding that Flood is free to leave baseball and is not forced to play the game, but is only obligated by his contract to play for the team that holds the contract. Flood sits out a year, which makes him a free agent. While ending his career, Flood's case and his willingness to sit out a year leads to the development of free agency for future players. Read more...

Shirley Chisholm, Democratic congresswoman from New York, becomes the first African American woman to seek the party's nomination for president. Read more...

Barbara Jordan is elected to the U.S. House of Representatives and serves three terms. Read more...

The sociologist Joyce Ladner publishes Tomorrow's Tomorrow. Read more...

Jewel Stradford Lafontant, the first black woman to serve as assistant U.S. attorney, is appointed deputy solicitor general of the United States by President Richard Nixon. Read more...

Alma Thomas is the first African American woman to have an individual show at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City. Read more...

Josh Gibson, the greatest player of the Negro Leagues (the “black Babe Ruth”), is elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame as a Negro League player. Gibson was too old to play in the major leagues when they were finally integrated. Read more...

White jurors acquit Angela Davis for her alleged role in a 1970 courtroom shooting in San Rafael, California, in which a judge and three other people were killed. Read more...

Dick “Richie” Allen, the Chicago White Sox first baseman, is named American League Most Valuable PlayerRead more...

National Basketball Hall of Fame inducts Robert L. (Bob) Douglas, the “father of black professional basketball” and the owner and coach of the New York Renaissance (“the Rens”) from 1922 until 1949. Between 1932 and 1933 he led the Rens to eighty-eight consecutive victories. Read more...

Yvonne Braithwaite Burke co-chairs the Democratic National Convention, the first black person to chair a major party's national political convention. Read more...

A National Education Association study reveals that African Americans have lost 30,000 teaching positions since 1954 in southern and border states because of desegregation and discrimination. Read more...

Johnson Publishing Company establishes a new headquarters in Chicago, in the city's first downtown building built by African Americans. Read more...

Allen Coage wins the bronze medal in judo at the Montreal Olympics, becoming the first African American to medal in this event. Blacks dominate track and field, winning 17 gold, 13 silver, and 4 bronze medals, setting six new world records. Read more...

Percy Sutton owns the country's largest black radio station, New York's WLIB-AM, which later expands into Inner City Broadcasting. Read more...

The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment—the forty-year study of the effects of untreated syphilis on several hundred black men living in rural Alabama—is leaked to the press; public outrage brings about the end of the worst medical scandal in U.S. history. Read more...

The National Association of Black Women Attorneys is founded and led by attorney Wilhelmina Jackson Rolark. Read more...

The Oldsmobile and Cadillac dealership-owner Albert William Johnson owns the largest black-owned auto dealership in the country, with annual revenues of $14.5 million.

Robert Gidron is the first African American owner of a Cadillac dealership in the Bronx, New York.

For the first time, the New York Stock Exchange appoints an African American to its board of directors, Jerome H. Holland.

In baseball Art Williams becomes the first black umpire in the National League.

An estimated 8,000 African Americans from all regions of the United States attend the first National Black Political Convention in Gary, Indiana; the convention approves a platform of demands that includes reparations for slavery, proportional representation for blacks in Congress, the abolition of capital punishment, increased federal spending to fight drug trafficking, and a guaranteed annual income of $6,500 for a family of four.

NAACP reports that unemployment among African Americans is greater than at any other time since the Great Depression.

Ishmael Reed publishes Mumbo Jumbo, his third novel and the work considered to be his masterpiece. It is a pastiche of a variety of genres and media—film, music, history, and the occult among them—and takes place primarily in Harlem during the Jazz Age. Read more...

The reporter Carl T. Rowan is elected to the prestigious Gridiron Club, an organization of journalists based in Washington, D.C. He is the group’s first black member. Read more...

Ronald L. Fair publishes his semi-autobiographical novel We Can’t Breathe, which tells of a black boy’s experience trying to overcome racial and social injustice on the South Side of Chicago. Read more...

Sherley Anne Williams publishes Give Birth to Brightness: A Thematic Study in Neo-Black Literature, her most acclaimed work. Influenced by black-aesthetic poetry of the 1960s, the work examines heroism and class issues in African American literary arts. Read more...

Toni Cade Bambara publishes her most renowned collection of short stories, Gorilla, My Love, which explores relationships in stories set both in the North and the South. Read more...

Jackie Robinson dies. Read more...

President Nixon appoints Jewel Lafontant-Mankarious to his cabinet as the first African American solicitor general. Read more...

Cicely Tyson wins two Emmy awards for her performance in Autobiography of Miss Jane Pitman. Read more...

Tom Bradley becomes the first African American mayor of Los Angeles. Read more...

Marian Wright Edelman founds the Children's Defense Fund to lobby for health, welfare, and justice for children and their families. Read more...

Gary Mathews, the San Francisco Giants outfielder, is named National League Rookie of the Year. Read more...

Reggie Jackson of the Oakland Athletics is unanimously voted the American League Most Valuable Player and also the World Series Most Valuable Player. Read more...

Black Enterprise magazine starts reporting the top 100 African American businesses in the country. Its inaugural list includes companies whose combined annual sales are $473.4 million. Motown Industries is the top-ranked business with revenues of $40 million, a spot it holds for ten years in a row. Read more...

With the Negro Ensemble Company's production of The River Niger, Shirley Prendergast becomes the first black woman lighting designer on Broadway. Read more...

The National Black Network, created by Unity Broadcasting of New York, is the first black-owned and -operated national radio news network. Read more...

The National Black Feminist Organization is founded. Read more...

Lelia K. Smith Foley is elected mayor of Taft, Oklahoma, becoming the first African American woman mayor in the continental United States. Read more...

Sara J. Harper is the first woman appointed as a justice for the U.S. Marine Corps. Read more...

Comer Cottrell establishes the Pro-Line Corporation, a hair products manufacturing company, in Gardena, California. He relocates his operations to Dallas, Texas, in 1976, where the company becomes the largest black-owned business in the Southwest.

The first African American supermodel Naomi Sims founds Naomi Sims Collection; her line of wigs grosses $5 million in sales the first year.

In Roe v. Wade, the U.S. Supreme Court establishes a woman's constitutional right to an abortion; over the next three decades and especially during George W. Bush's presidency, state and federal legislators and the Supreme Court gradually impose restrictions on that right.

Elizabeth Carnegie becomes editor in chief of Nursing Research, a national journal; she is the first African American to hold the position.

Alice Walker publishes Revolutionary Petunias and Other Poems. Read more...

Elizabeth Carnegie becomes the first black American to be appointed editor-in-chief of Nursing Research, a national journal. Read more...

John Edgar Wideman publishes the novel The Lynchers. Read more...

The composer, bandleader, and performer Duke Ellington dies. Read more...

With his 715th homerun, Hank Aaron breaks the record of Babe Ruth; although Aaron is considered one of the all-time greatest baseball players, he receives death threats and hate mail as a result of breaking Ruth's record. Read more...

The boxing promoter Don King bills the Ali-Frazier fight in Zaire as the “Rumble in the Jungle.” Each fighter is guaranteed $5 million out of an estimated $30 million purse. Read more...

Thirty-two-year-old Muhammad Ali defeats fellow African American George Foreman, to regain the heavyweight boxing title taken from him in 1967. The fight in Kinshasa, Zaire, brings some revenue and great publicity to that African nation. Read more...

Bake McBride, the St. Louis Cardinals outfielder, is named National League Rookie of the Year. Read more...

African American businesses on Black Enterprise magazine's BE 100 list have combined annual sales of $600 million. Read more...

The first African American mayor in Atlanta, Maynard Jackson, establishes the Minority Business Enterprise Program, which revolutionizes African American participation in public works projects. In 1973 the city of Atlanta granted black-owned construction companies a mere 0.001 percent of muncipal contracts ($41,758 out of $33 million). However, when Atlanta begins construction of the $750 million Hartsfield International Airport, under Jackson's leadership over seventy African American firms are awarded contracts that total $87 million. Read more...

The Ebony Opera Company is founded in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Read more...

Frank Robinson becomes the first black manager of a major league team when he is hired to manage the Cleveland Indians for the 1975 season. Read more...

In the case of Milliken v. Bradley, the Supreme Court nullifies an attempt to implement the “metropolitan integration” of predominantly black schools in Detroit with those of nearby white suburbs; Justice Thurgood Marshall calls the ruing “an emasculation of the constitutional guarantee of equal opportunity.” Read more...

Elaine Brown becomes the first and only female chairperson of the Black Panther Party. Read more...

The radical black feminist Combahee River Collective is founded in Roxbury, Massachusetts. Read more...

Virginia Hamilton publishes M.C. Higgins, the Great, which wins the American Library Association's Newberry Medal for the “most distinguished contribution to literature for children published in the United States,” the National Book Award, the Lewis Carroll Shelf Award, and the International Board of Books for Young People Award. Read more...

Guinea, Cape Verde, Angola, and Mozambique become independent.

In Detroit, Conyers Ford is not only the top African American car dealership in the country, but is also the only African American dealership to reach the BE 100 list every year.

The National Black MBA Association incorporates as a non-profit organization in New York.

The top African American bank is Independence Bank of Chicago.

Ann Allen Shockley publishes Loving Her. It is the first known novel with a lesbian protagonist written by a black woman. Read more...

Chester L. Washington, the first black reporter for the Los Angeles Times, becomes head of Central News-Wave Publications in California. Under his leadership, the organization grows to become the largest black newspaper operation in any single metropolitan area. Read more...

Maya Angelou publishes another autobiographical work, Gather Together in My Name, which focuses on her and her brother’s relationship with their grandmother. Read more...

Bill Russell becomes the first black NBA player elected to the Basketball Hall of Fame (opened in 1959). Read more...

Cardiss Collins becomes the first African American and the first woman to be appointed Democratic Party whip-at-large of the U.S. House of Representatives. Read more...

Arthur Ashe becomes the first and only (as of 2006) black to win the men's singles tournament at Wimbledon, defeating the American Jimmy Connors. Read more...

The St. Louis Cardinals second baseman Joe Morgan is voted the National League Most Valuable Player. Read more...

The all-white PGA invites the black golfer Lee Elder to play in the Masters. Golf is the last professional sport to be integrated. Read more...

Elijah Muhammad dies and is succeeded by his son, Wallace D. Muhammad, as the head of the Nation of Islam; Wallace rejects his father's separatist teachings, adopts orthodox Islam, and changes the name of the organization to the World Community of al-Islam in the West. Read more...

The two largest and most successful African American insurance companies, North Carolina Mutual Life and Atlanta Life, are contracted by Harvard University to provide $47 million in group life insurance. Read more...

NAACP wins a court order to integrate Boston schools by busing black children from Roxbury to predominantly white schools in Charlestown; the transition is marked by racial violence. Read more...

Pam Grier becomes the first black woman featured on the cover of Ms. magazine. Read more...

Associated Press names Muhammad Ali, the world heavyweight boxing champion, Athlete of the Year for 1974. Read more...

Margaret Bush Wilson becomes the first black woman chair of the board of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Read more...

Minority-owned financial and banking institutions establish the National Association of Urban Bankers.

William V. Banks pays $750,000 for WGPR-TV in Detroit, becoming the first African Ameircan to own and operate a television station.

Doley Securities in New Orleans is the third black investment firm to trade on the NYSE.

Wallace (Wally) Amos Jr. founds Famous Amos Chocolate Chip Cookies.

The Congress of African Peoples (CAP) launches the Black Women United Front.

Gloria Randle Scott becomes the first African American woman to serve as national president of the Girl Scouts, USA.

JoAnne Little is acquitted of murder charges in the death of the prison guard who raped her in a jail cell in Beaufort, North Carolina; the case becomes a cause célèbre, highlighting the sexual abuse of black women and the denial of basic rights of black prisoners.

New York Times reports that the FBI wiretapped conversations of civil rights leaders, including Martin Luther King Jr.

Gayl Jones publishes her first novel, Corregidora, while a graduate student at Brown University. The novel explores the sexual victimization of women. Read more...

Maya Angelou publishes a book of poetry, Oh Pray My Wings are Gonna Fit Me Well. The volume includes poems that confront issues of race and racism and which reflect her experiences abroad and in Africa. Read more...

Robert Hayden publishes Angle of Ascent: New and Selected Poems. The same year he is named a fellow of the Academy of American Poets; the organization further recognizes his “distinguished poetic achievement” with a $10,000 prize. Read more...

The science-fiction writer Samuel R. Delany publishes Dhalgren, which establishes him as a major American author. One of the most important writers of the genre, he is noted for his explorations of sexuality, as well as for his use of metaphor, myth, and wordplay. Read more...

The Texas congresswoman Barbara Jordan is the first African American to deliver the keynote address at the Democratic National Convention. Read more...

Pauli Murray is the first African American woman priest ordained in the Episcopal Church. Read more...

The civil rights leader Jesse Jackson publicly condemns the NCAA for the lack of black basketball coaches. Read more...

President Gerald Ford presents the Medal of Freedom to Jesse Owens for his “inspirational life” and for his contributions to the ideals of freedom and democracy. Read more...

Arthur Ashe wins the world tennis championship. Read more...

Mary Frances Berry becomes chancellor of the University of Colorado at Boulder, the first African American woman to head a major research university. Read more...

Maxine Waters is elected to the California State Assembly. Read more...

The congregation of President-elect Jimmy Carter's Baptist church in Plains, Georgia, votes to drop its ban on attendance by African Americans. Read more...

The St. Louis Cardinals second baseman Joe Morgan is voted the National League Most Valuable Player for the second year in a row. Read more...

Muhammad Ali retains the heavyweight title in a New York City championship fight that has, at the time, the largest gate in history, $3.5 million, surpassing the 1927 record of $2.6 million for the Tunney-Dempsey fight. Read more...

Yvonne Braithwaite Burke, representative from California, becomes the first woman to chair the Congressional Black Caucus. Read more...

Annual sales for companies on the BE 100 list falls compared to the previous year to $623.9 million. Pro-Line Corporation and H. F. Henderson Industries debut on the BE 100 list. Read more...

The heavyweight boxer Leon Spinks wins the gold medal at the Olympics; his brother Michael Spinks wins gold in the middleweight class. Sugar Ray Leonard wins gold in the light welterweight class. Anita De Franz becomes the first black to win an Olympic medal in rowing. Lloyd Keaser wins silver in freesylte wrestling. In track and field, no African Americans win medals in any sprints, but blacks nevertheless win 10 gold, 8 silver, and 3 bronze medals. Read more...

Residents of Soweto and other black townships begin violent protests against apartheid. Read more...

President-elect Carter appoints Andrew Young as chief delegate to the United Nations and Patricia Roberts Harris as secretary of housing and urban development; more than sixty African Americans receive executive and administrative positions in the Carter White House. Read more...

The National Alliance of Black Feminists is formed. Read more...

Clara Stanton Jones is the first African American to be president of the American Library Association. Read more...

Ntozake Shange's for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf appears on Broadway. Read more...

African Americans own forty-one insurance companies. There are 1,800 insurance companies in the country.

The New Jersey Supreme Court unanimously overturns the murder conviction of the boxer Rubin “Hurricane” Carter.

William (Bill) Lucas becomes director of player personnel for the Atlanta Braves. This makes him the first black in a top executive position in major league baseball.

Black voters play a significant role in Jimmy Carter's victory over the Republican Gerald Ford in the presidential election; Cater receives about 94 percent of the African American vote.

Chancellery court in Mississippi orders the NAACP to pay the sum of $1,250,058 to twelve Port Gibson merchants as compensation for the financial hardships inflicted on the merchants during the successful boycott of white businesses in 1966.

Alex Haley publishes his autobiographical novel Roots, which traces his family history for seven generations. More than 1.6 million copies of the work are sold within the first six months of its publication and it is translated into 22 languages, becoming a cultural phenomenon. In 1977 Haley will receive a special Pulitzer Prize citation for work, as well as a National Book Award. Later, the book will be made into an enormously successful television miniseries. Read more...

Gayl Jones publishes her second novel, Eva's Man. Like her previous novel, a principal theme is the sexual abuse of women and their lack of control over their own bodies. Read more...

Maya Angelou publishes the autobiographical Singin' and Swingin' and Gettin' Merry Like Christmas, the story of her failed marriage to a Greek sailor. Read more...

Paul Robeson, college All American and early National Football League star, dies at at seventy-seven. After leaving sports Robeson became even more famous as one of nation's leading singers and actors and also played an important role in the civil rights movement. Read more...

Toni Morrison's novel Song of Solomon becomes a Book-of-the-Month Club selection, the first by a black author since Richard Wright's Native Son (1940). Read more...

Roy Wilkins, a forty-two-year veteran of the NAACP, announces his retirement during the organization's sixty-eighth annual convention. Read more...

President Carter appoints Eleanor Holmes Norton to chair the Equal Employment Opportunities Commission; Mary Frances Berry becomes the assistant secretary for education in the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. Read more...

Patricia Roberts Harris becomes the first black woman in the U.S. cabinet, when she is appointed secretary of housing and urban development (HUD) by President Jimmy Carter. Read more...

The Cincinnati Reds outfielder George Foster is named National League Most Valuable Player. Read more...

Eddie Murray, the Baltimore Orioles designated hitter, is named the American League Rookie of the Year; Andre Dawson, the Montreal Expos outfielder is the National League Rookie of the Year. It is the first time that African Americans win the award in both leagues in the same year. Read more...

Charles “Tarzan” Cooper, who spent his career playing for all-black teams, is elected to the Basketball Hall of Fame. Elgin Baylor is also elected; he is the second black NBA player in Hall of Fame. Read more...

African American businesses listed on the BE 100 earn $787.4 million; they employ 11,897 people. Read more...

The black Latino Rod Carew, who is the Minnesota Twins first baseman, wins the American League Most Valuable Player award. Read more...

In the World Series the New York Yankees outfielder Reggie Jackson hits four home runs in a row, over two games, including three home runs in one game. The manager of the losing Los Angeles Dodgers, Tommy Lasorda calls Jackson's three home runs in one game “the greatest performance I've ever seen in a world series.” Jackson is named World Series Most Valuable Player for the second time. Read more...

Lusia Harris is the first African American woman to be drafted by a National Basketball Association (NBA) team, but she declines offers from the New Orleans Jazz and the Milwaukee Bucks. Read more...

The Women's Basketball League is organized. Read more...

Azie Taylor Morton becomes the first and only black person to serve as U.S. Treasurer. Read more...

Joan Scott Wallace is named assistant secretary of agriculture, becoming the first African American to hold this post since it was created by Abraham Lincoln in 1862. Read more...

Alex Haley receives the National Book Award and a special Pulitzer Prize citation for Roots, the part-fact, part-fiction epic that traces his maternal lineage back to an enslaved West African ancestor; the book is later turned into a successful television miniseries. Read more...

Consolidated Edison grants its first million-dollar contract to an African American company. Kenwood Commercial Furniture is contracted to install carpet in all of the utility company's New York City and Westchester County offices.

Sulton-Campbell and Associates build the first hotel in Washington, D.C., designed and constructed by blacks, the Harambee House. People's Involvement Corporation, a local civic group, owns the hotel and will later sell it to Howard University.

The E. G. Bowman Company, founded by Ernesta Procope, is the first African American commercial insurance brokerage firm on Wall Street.

Jewel Prestage, the first African American woman to receive a PhD in political science in the United States, becomes a member of the Judicial Council of the national Democratic Party.

Jewell Jackson McCabe becomes president of the Coalition of 100 Black Women and launches a national movement in 1981.

President Carter appoints Carolyn Robertson Payton to the position of Peace Corps director. She is the first woman, the first black, and the first psychologist to serve in this capacity.

In cutting off Medicaid funds for abortions, the Hyde Amendment effectively denies minority women their right to terminate a pregnancy.

Gayl Jones publishes White Rat, a collection of short stories dealing with power, coercion, and sexual relationships. Read more...

Mildred Taylor wins the Newberry Medal for her children’s book Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry. Read more...

Toni Cade Bambara publishes Sea-Birds are Still Alive, a collection of short stories influenced by her foreign travel, and stressing that people must come together and organize—a theme that becomes increasingly important in her work. Read more...

Faye Wattleton becomes the first African American and the first woman to serve as president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America. Read more...

Louis Farrakhan breaks with Wallace D. Muhammad and reestablishes the Nation of Islam under Elijah Muhammad's original precepts of black separatism. Read more...

Jim Rice, a Boston Red Sox outfielder, wins the American League Most Valuable Player award. Read more...

Lou Whitaker, the Detroit Tigers second baseman, is named the American League Rookie of the Year. This the first time African Americans have won back-to-back Rookie of the Year awards in the American League. Read more...

African American businesses listed on the BE 100 had revenues of $886.7 million for the year. Car dealerships account for forty-two of the businesses listed, which reflects the "Big Three"'s (Chrysler, Ford, and General Motors) commitment to providing African Americans opportunities to own dealerships. Read more...

Charlayne Hunter-Gault, one of the first black students to attend the University of Georgia, joins Public Broadcasting System's MacNeil/Lehrer News Hour as a national correspondent. Read more...

The African American scientists Guion S. Bluford, Frederick D. Gregory, and Ronald McNair join the space program and begin training as astronauts for future space missions. Read more...

Leon Spinks defeats Muhammad Ali to become the heavyweight boxing champion of the world. Read more...

Joshua I. Smith establishes the largest African American computer systems and information management firms, Maxima Corporation.

President Jimmy Carter hosts a meeting with one hundred of the top African businesses at the White House to discuss opportunities for minority businesses.

After being denied admissions to the Medical School at the University of California at Davis, Allen Bakke charges the school with “reverse discrimination;” the Supreme Court orders the school to admit the white student, claiming that Bakke had been denied “equal protection of the law..

Eldridge Cleaver publishes his autobiographical Soul on Fire, the story of his conversion from evangelical Christianity to Mormonism. Read more...

Ernest Gaines publishes the novel In My Father’s House. Read more...

James Alan McPherson Jr. wins the Pulitzer Prize in fiction for his book of short stories, Elbow Room. Read more...

Ntozake Shange publishes her poetry collection Nappy Edges. Read more...

Robert Hayden publishes the first incarnation of American Journal (also 1982), a collection of poetry commemorating the achievements of black Americans, including the works of Phillis Wheatley and Paul Laurence Dunbar. Read more...

Sharon Harley and Rosalyn Terborg-Penn’s Afro-American Woman: Struggles and Images is published. It is the first anthology of black women’s history. Read more...

Sonia Sanchez wins the American Book Award for I’ve Been a Woman, a book of poems. Read more...

Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon wins the National Book Critics Circle Award. Read more...

Muhammad Ali defeats Leon Spinks to regain the heavyweight boxing championship, becoming the first boxer to win the title three times. Ali is thirty-six at the time, eleven years older than Spinks. Read more...

When appointed brigadier general in the U.S. Army Nurse Corps, Hazel Johnson-Brown becomes the first black woman general in the history of the U.S. military, she is also appointed chief of the Army Nurse Corps, the first African American to hold that position. Read more...

Rosa Parks is awarded the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People's Spingarn Medal. Read more...

President Jimmy Carter gives the aging Olympic star Jesse Owens a Living Legends Award. Read more...

Dorothy E. Brunson becomes the first African American woman to own a radio station when she purchases WEBB in Baltimore. By 1990, she will own three more radio stations and WGTV, a television station in Philadelphia. Read more...

The Sugar Hill Gang issues the first commercially successful rap single. Read more...

In an attempt to eliminate “manifest racial imbalance” in traditionally white jobs, the Supreme Court rules that companies can use quotas to aid minorities in employment. Read more...

Don Baylor, the California Angels designated hitter, wins the American League Most Valuable Player. Read more...

Willie Stargell, the Pittsburgh Pirates first baseman, is named the National League Most Valuable Player and is also voted the World Series Most Valuable Player. Read more...

Wilt Chamberlain, the only player to score 100 points in a single game, is elected to Basketball Hall of Fame. Also inducted is John McLendon, who compiled a record of 523 wins and 165 losses while coaching teams at various black colleges and universities, historically white colleges, and three integrated professional teams. Read more...

African American businesses listed on the BE 100 surpass the billion dollar mark, with revenues of $1.053 billion for the year. Read more...

Congressional Black Caucus and delegates from eleven southern states set up an “action alert communications network” to exert pressure on white congressional representatives from predominantly black districts to vote with the caucus on issues of concern to black and minority citizens. Read more...

The golfer Lee Elder plays on the U.S. Ryder Cup team. Read more...

Patricia Roberts Harris becomes Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare. Read more...

The Ford Foundation appoints Franklin Thomas president and CEO. He is the first African American appointed to the highest ranking position within a major charity. Read more...

Andrew Young resigns as chief U.S. delegate to the United Nations after being publicly criticized for holding unauthorized talks with the Palestine Liberation Organization; his resignation sets off a storm of controversy. Read more...

The Association of Black Women Historians is founded. Read more...

The National Archives for Black Women's History and the Mary McLeod Bethune Memorial Museum open in Washington, D.C. Read more...

Number of African American women earning doctorates in mathematics, science, and engineering exceeds that of black men for the first time, setting a trend that continues to the present. Read more...

Jenny Patrick is the first black woman in the U.S. to earn a PhD in chemical engineering (Massachusetts Institute of Technology). Read more...

Barbara Chase-Riboud’s Sally Hemings wins the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize for the best novel by an American woman. The work is a historical romance based on the relationship between the U.S. president Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings, one of his slaves. Read more...

A Small Business Administration study reports that 20 percent of federal aid recipients listed as minority-owned are actually fronts for white-owned businesses whose owners believed they would receive preferential treatment as a minority business.

The first African American railway, the Kent-Barry-Eaton Connection Railway Company, begins service between Grand Rapids and Vermontville, Michigan.

By a vote of 408 to 1, the U.S. House of Representatives decides to place a bust of Martin Luther King Jr. in the Capitol, the first time a work of art honoring an African American has been placed in the building.

Study conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau indicates that although African Americans have made advances in employment, income, political power, and other measures of social well being, they are still far behind white Americans.

Lance Jeffers publishes Grandsire, a collection of poems inspired by his grandfather, reflecting Jeffers' strong interest in recognizing and reclaiming African heritage. Read more...

Lucille Clifton is named poet laureate of Maryland. Read more...

Robert Maynor becomes the first black editor-publisher of a daily newspaper whose readership is predominantly white. He changes the paper’s name from the Oakland Tribune-East Bay Today to the Oakland Tribune.

Zimbabwe becomes independent. Read more...

Vernon Jordan, the executive director of the National Urban League, is shot in the back; a suspect is tried and acquitted on the charge of violating Jordan's civil rights, not attempted murder. Read more...

President Jimmy Carter appoints Judge Norma Holloway Johnson to the United States District Court for the District of Columbia. She is the first African American woman appointed to a federal court in the District of Columbia. Read more...

With $15,000 Robert Johnson founds Black Entertainment Television (BET), the first and only black-owned cable television network. Read more...

The Congressional Black Caucus criticizes President Carter's 1981 budget for reducing the funding for social programs, pronouncing the budget proposal “an unmitigated disaster for the poor, the unemployed, and minorities.” Read more...

Schools in Saint Louis, Missouri, are integrated peacefully after eight years of struggle; government officials in Cincinnati, Ohio, agree to hire and promote more blacks and women within the police department. Read more...

Oscar Robertson, the "Big O,” is elected to the Basketball Hall of Fame. Read more...

The Schomberg Center for Research in Black Culture opens a $3.8-million building in Harlem. Read more...

Toni Cade Bambara receives the American Book Award for Salt Eaters. Read more...

African American oil companies like Grimes Oil in Boston benefit from increased oil prices; the company reports sales of $30 million.

In the first leveraged buyout of an African American company, Raymond V. Haysbert Sr. buys out Parks Sausage Company's white investors.

The National Museum of American History asks Wally “Famous” Amos, who created a $250-million cookie business, to donate his trademark Panama hat to its American Collection. It is the first time a national museum has made such a request of an African American businessperson.

Of all black women in the labor force, 6.5 percent are employed in domestic service, 24.3 percent are in other service work, 32.4 percent are in clerical and sales positions, and 14.8 percent are in professional positions.

With Harris v. McRae, the U.S. Supreme Court upholds the cutoff of Medicaid funds for abortion.

Black population of the United States is 26,495,025, or 11.7 percent of the total population. There are 14,071,000 women. The U.S. Department of Labor announces that black unemployment is at 14 percent.

Despite widespread protest from civil rights groups, Ronald Reagan is elected president.

J.B. Stoner, a white supremacist, is convicted for the 1958 bombing of a black church in Birmingham, Alabama.

Lucille Clifton is nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for her book of poetry Two-Headed Woman. Read more...

Rita Dove publishes Yellow House on the Corner, her first book of poetry with a major press. Read more...

Roy Wilkins, the former head of the NAACP and one of the key players in the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, dies. Read more...

Rube Foster, a Negro League player, owner, and entrepreneur, is elected to the Baseball Hall of FameRead more...

Lena Horne's The Lady and Her Music opens on Broadway and becomes the longest-running one-woman show in Broadway history; the show wins several awards, including a Tony, Drama Desk Award, and Drama Critics Circle citation. Read more...

Acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) first gains national media attention; initially regarded as a disease affecting gay white men, it soon becomes clear that scores of African Americans are also at risk for the disease. Read more...

African American companies on the BE 100 report revenues of $1.53 billion for the year. Read more...

Vernon Jordan resigns as executive director of the National Urban League to join a law firm in Washington, D.C. Read more...

The Reagan administration fails to prevent a third extension of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. Read more...

Zina Garrison, at age seventeen, is the first black player to win the junior singles tennis championship at Wimbledon (England). Read more...

The African American lawyer Arnetta R. Hubbard is the first woman to become president of the National Bar Association. Read more...

Albert Johnson opens the first black-owned Saab dealership.

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) launches “Operation Fair Share,” a program aimed at promoting entrepreneurship among African Americans, increasing job opportunities at white-owned companies, and ensuring that African American businesses are awarded a fair share of government contracts.

Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press, co-founded by the feminist critic Barbara Smith, begins publishing in New York. The press will publish works by Smith and the poet Audre Lorde, among others.

Charlie Sampson becomes the first black bullrider to qualify for the national rodeo finals. He will do so for the next four years.

The Labor Department proposes revisions to Executive Order 11246 (which prohibits employment discrimination by federal contractors) aimed at weakening affirmative action requirements for small contractors.

William Bradford Reynolds, an assistant attorney general in the civil rights division of the Justice Department, announces a plan to seek a Supreme Court ruling that would find it unconstitutional to give minorities and women preferential treatment in hiring and promotion.

David Bradley publishes his second novel, Chaneysville Incident, based on the true story of thirteen runaway slaves who chose to die rather than be recaptured. The novel is awarded the PEN/Faulkner Prize and becomes an alternative selection for the Book-of-the-Month Club. Read more...

Gayl Jones publishes Song for Anninho, a prose poem about a romance between two escaped slaves in seventeenth-century Brazil. Read more...

Mari Evans publishes Nightstar 1973–1978, a collection of poems that progresses from the personal to the political. Read more...

Toni Morrison publishes the novel Tar Baby. It is an instant commercial success, appearing on the New York Times best-seller list less than a month after publication. Read more...

The Washington Post reporter Janet Cooke wins the Pulitzer Prize for “Jimmy’s World,” her profile of an eight-year-old drug addict. Three days later, the prize is withdrawn when Cooke admits the story was fabricated. Read more...

Pamela Johnson becomes publisher of the Ithaca Journal. She is the first black woman publisher of a periodical since Julia Ringwood Coston (1891). Read more...

Harold Washington is sworn in as the first African American mayor of Chicago. Read more...

NBA stars Willis Reed and Hal Greer are elected to the Basketball Hall of Fame. Also elected is Clarence E. “Big House” Gaines, the second winningest coach in college basketball during his career at Winston-Salem State University. Read more...

The top African American businesses on the BE 100 bring in $1.9 billion in revenues for the year. Motown remains number one on the list, with $91.7 million in revenue. “Miscellaneous retail businessess” comprise the largest segment of African American businesses, numbering 53,981 firms and gross revenues of $993 million. Read more...

A fight to block a toxic waste dump in Warren County, North Carolina, launches a nationwide movement against environmental racism. Read more...

The University of Georgia running back Herschel Walker wins the Heisman Trophy. He is the seventh college junior to win this award. Read more...

The Justice Department proposes that the city of Chicago be allowed to integrate its schools according to a plan that relies on voluntary student transfers rather than mandatory busing. Read more...

The Combahee River Collective issues “A Black Feminist Statement.” Read more...

The first national conference on black women's health issues is sponsored by the National Black Women's Health Project under the direction of Byllye Y. Avery. Read more...

All the Women Are White, All the Blacks Are Men, But Some of Us Are Brave, a pioneering collection of essays in black women's studies, is edited by Gloria T. Hull, Patricia Bell-Scott, and Barbara Smith. Read more...

Kathleen Collins is the first African American woman to direct a feature-length film, Losing Ground, which she also wrote. Read more...

Alice Walker publishes Color Purple, which wins the Pulitzer Prize and the American Book Award in 1983 and is made into a movie in 1985. Read more...

There are 3,448 African American car dealerships and service stations. They make $1.3 billion in annual revenues.

Mildred Glenn is elected president at the only black-owned bank in Pennsylvania, New World National Bank; she is the first African American woman bank president in the state.

Corporations make up only 1.8 percent of African American businesses; sole proprietorships make up more than 95 percent.

The bullrider Charlie Sampson becomes the first black to win the Winton Rodeo Series and the world championship in a rodeo event.

Gloria Naylor publishes her first novel, Women of Brewster Place, a representation of the multiple perspectives of black women. The book will win the National Book Award the following year. Read more...

Ntozake Shange publishes the novel Sassafras, Cypress, and Indigo, the story of three sisters. Read more...

Robert E. Hayden publishes an expanded version of his 1977 book American Journal while he is dying of cancer. Read more...

Sporting News names the North Carolina basketball player Michael Jordan the college player of the year. Read more...

Darryl Strawberry, the New York Mets outfielder, is named National League Rookie of the Year. Read more...

Majority of members of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights charge that the Reagan administration's Justice Department has been moving in the direction of ending affirmative action; the president's attempt to reconfigure the commission is thwarted when Mary Frances Berry and Blandina Cardenas Ramirez, both members of the commission, bring suit. Read more...

African American businesses on the BE 100 list pass the $2 billion mark in total revenues for the year, but only three companies had earned more than $100 million: Motown at $104.3 million; H. J. Russell Construction at $103.85 million; and Johnson Publishing at $102.65 million. Read more...

Business administration accounts for 25 percent of all American college undergraduates, including whites and African Americans. Read more...

Kitchen Table Press publishes Home Girls: A Black Feminist Anthology, edited by Barbara Smith. The work is a pioneering collection of writings by black feminist and lesbian activists. Read more...

Benjamin Hooks, executive director of the NAACP, is suspended indefinitely by the organization's chairman, Margaret Bush Wilson, who accuses Hooks of mismanagement, although the charges are never proved; a majority of the members support Hooks and he never officially leaves his post. Read more...

Jesse Jackson announces his intention to seek the Democratic nomination for the presidency. Read more...

Vanessa Williams becomes the first black woman to win the swimsuit and talent competitions and the Miss America crown in the sixty-three-year history of the pageant. Read more...

Christine Darden is the first black woman in the U.S. to earn a PhD degree in mechanical engineering (George Washington University). Read more...

Due to the popularity of the Jheri curl, black hair care becomes one of the fastest growing industries among African Americans. The Jheri curl requires a two-part application process consisting of a texturizer and activator. The chemical texturizer releases the naturally tight curl of black hair, causing it to hang loosely. Then the activator moistens the hair to keep the loosened curls from breaking, providing an oily sheen.

By a vote of 78 to 22 in the Senate, and over the objections of several southern congressmen, President Reagan (who had initially opposed the bill) signs into law a bill making the third Monday in January a day honoring the life of Martin Luther King Jr.

In elections throughout the nation, African Americans make significant gains: Wilson Goode becomes mayor of Philadelphia; Harvey Gantt becomes the first black mayor of Charlotte, North Carolina; James A Sharp Jr. becomes the first black mayor of Flint, Michigan; Thirman Milner wins a second term in Hartford, Connecticut; and Richard Hatcher wins a fifth term in Gary, Indiana.

Ernest J. Gaines publishes A Gathering of Old Men, a detective novel that explores race relations during the 1970s. Read more...

Gayl Jones publishes the book of poems Hermit-Woman. Read more...

Maya Angelou publishes the poetry collection Shaker, Why Don’t You Sing? Read more...

Lena Horne is honored at the Kennedy Center for her lifetime achievement in the performing arts. Read more...

Leontine T. C. Kelly, the first black woman bishop of a major religious denomination in the United States, is elected head of the United Methodist church in the San Francisco area. Read more...

Jesse Jackson withdraws from the presidential race. Read more...

The Cosby Show premiers on network television; the show, which breaks new ground by representing the daily lives of an upper-middle-class African American family, soon becomes one of the most popular shows on television. Read more...

In college basketball the Georgetown Hoyas, coached by John Thompson, win the NCAA championship. It is the first time a black college coach leads a team to the NCAA championship. Read more...

Randall Robinson and other civil rights activists begin an antiapartheid vigil in front of the South African embassy in Washington, D.C. Read more...

Alvin Davis of the Seattle Mariners is named American League Rookie of the Year; Dwight Gooden, the New York Mets pitcher, is the National League Rookie of the Year. Read more...

Sam Jones is elected to the Basketball Hall of Fame. Read more...

Julius “Dr. J” Erving, the basketball hall-of-famer, and Bruce Llewellyn purchase a Philadelphia-based Coca-Cola bottling franchise; it will become the fourth-largest African American business in the country. Read more...

Marcus Allen, the running back for the Los Angeles Raiders, is voted the most valuable player in Supreme Bowl XXVIII. Read more...

Benjamin Hooks leads a March on Washington of approximately 125,000 people to protest the “legal lynching” of civil rights by President Reagan. Read more...

Michael Jordan leaves college a year early and is drafted by the Chicago Bulls. Before joining the Bulls wins a gold medal with the U.S. Olympic basketball tea. Read more...

With the USSR boycotting the Olympics, American black athletes dominate track and field, winning 27 gold, 10 silver, and 3 bronze medals, while setting a world record in the one-mile relay and breaking 12 Olympic records. The sprinter Carl Lewis wins four gold medals at the Olympic Games in Los Angeles (and helping to set the 4 X 400 relay record), becoming the first athlete the match Jesse Owens's performance at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, Germany. Greg Gibson wins silver in Greco-Roman wrestling, the first black man to medal in the sport. Read more...

In July, Vanessa Williams is forced to abdicate her Miss America crown after Penthouse magazine publishes previously taken nude photos. Read more...

Octavia E. Butler wins two of science fiction's most prestigious awards, the Hugo Award for her short story “Speech Sounds” and the Nebula Award for her novelette Blood-child. Read more...

SAGE: A Scholarly Journal on Black Women begins publication under the editorial direction of Patricia Bell-Scott and Beverly Guy-Sheftall. Read more...

African American business receipts continued to increase, reaching $2.33 billion. However, decreasing oil prices negatively affect African American oil company profits.

Drew Pearson, Ken Shead, and Mike Russell found Drew Pearson Companies. By aggressively courting contracts with sports teams, the will become the largest African American licensed headwear dealer for professional baseball, football, and basketball, as well as for college sports.

The Census Bureau counts 350,000 African American businesses.

The National Association of Securities Professionals is established to promote the interests of minorities and women in the securities industry.

Emory A. Tate Jr., an Air Force sergeant, wins the twenty-fifth annual armed forces chess championship, becoming the first black to win a major chess tournament.

Amiri Baraka (Leroi Jones) publishes Autobiography of Leroi Jones and Daggers and Javelins. Read more...

Linda Beatrice Brown publishes Rainbow Roun Mah Shoulder, a story set in the early twentieth century about a black woman in the south who discovers she has the power to heal. The book will unanimously win first prize in a literary contest sponsored by the North Carolina Cultural Arts Coalition and Carolina Wren Press. Read more...

Michelle Cliff publishes her first novel, Abeng, which explores issues of identity, race, class, and sexuality as experienced by a light-skinned woman in Jamaica. Read more...

U.S. House of Representatives gives final approval to a bill imposing economic sanctions against South Africa because of its apartheid policy; President Reagan opposes the legislation. Read more...

Blacks make up 52 percent of all NFL players. Read more...

Lou Brock, a former star on the St. Louis Cardinals, is the fifteenth player in baseball history to be elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in his first year of eligibility. Read more...

The New York Mets pitcher Dwight Gooden is unanimously chosen the National League Cy Young Award winner. Read more...

The St. Louis Cardinals outfielder Willie McGee is voted National League Most Valuable Player. Read more...

Vince Coleman, the St. Louis Cardinals outfielder is unanimously chosen National League Rookie of the Year. Read more...

Nate Thurmond is elected to the Basketball Hall of Fame. Read more...

In a final showdown with the Philadelphia police, eleven members of MOVE, a radical black nationalist organization, are killed when a bomb is dropped on their headquarters. Read more...

Sherian Grace Cadoria is the first black woman promoted to brigadier general in the regular U.S. Army. Read more...

The Commission on Civil Rights supports the Supreme Court decision to give preference to seniority systems over affirmative action programs, which were instituted to remedy previous discrimination in hiring and promotion. Civil rights groups protest the commission's position; Clarence Pendleton, the commission chairman, urges the abolition of the Commission on Civil Rights. Read more...

Dubbed the “Subway Vigilante,” Bernard Goetz is indicted on a weapons charge after shooting four black youths, paralyzing one of them. Read more...

August Wilson publishes the play Fences, the story of a black family at the dawn of the Civil Rights Movement in 1959. The drama will win a Pulitzer Prize in 1987. Read more...

Gayl Jones publishes Xarque and Other Poems. Read more...

Gwendolyn Brooks becomes the first black woman appointed as poetry consultant to Library of Congress. Read more...

Jamaica Kincaid publishes the short novel Annie John, a coming-of-age story about a young girl in Antigua. Read more...

Charlayne Hunter-Gault receives the George Foster Peabody Award for Excellence in Broadcast Journalism for her report on South Africa, Apartheid's People. Read more...

Sports Illustrated names Cheryl Miller of the University of Southern California the best college basketball player among both men and women in the nation. Read more...

The Oprah Winfrey Show goes national, making Oprah Winfrey the first African American woman to host a nationally syndicated weekday talk show. Read more...

The Center for Disease Control and Prevention reports that African Americans constitute 25 percent of all AIDS cases in the United States. Read more...

African American businesses on the BE 100 list have revenues of nearly $3 billion. Read more...

In the NBA playoffs Michael Jordan of the Chicago Bulls sets single game record with 63 points in a losing effort against the Boston Celtics. Read more...

Lynette Woodard becomes the first woman Harlem Globetrotter. Read more...

The NAACP opens its new headquarters in Baltimore, Maryland, and broadens its scope to include new and diverse programs, such as business development, in accord with its general goal of social and economic justice. Read more...

The U.S. Supreme Court rules unanimously that sexual harassment constitutes illegal job discrimination. Read more...

Spike Lee writes, produces, directs, and stars in She's Gotta Have It; his first film costs $175,000 to make and grosses $8 million. Lee becomes the first black filmmaker to achieve both critical and commercial success producing movies about African American cultural identity. Read more...

George Branham becomes the first black to win a Professional Bowlers Association (PBA) championship.

Looking for a tow for his disabled car in the Howard Beach neighborhood of Queens, New York, Michael Griffith is attacked by a white mob and killed after being struck by a car while trying to escape from being clubbed and beaten.

A. G. Gaston sells the Booker T. Washington Insurance Company to its 400 employees for $3.5 million. Read more...

Representative Charles Rangel (Democrat from New York) introduces two measures to have the late revolutionary civil rights leader Marcus Garvey exonerated of mail fraud charges; the move comes after Robert Hill, editor of the Garvey papers, discovers evidence indicating that Garvey's conviction in 1924 may have been politically motivated. Read more...

Johnnetta Cole becomes president of Spelman College, the first black woman to head the oldest college for black women still in existence. Read more...

Mae Jemison joins NASA, becoming the first African American woman astronaut. Read more...

Aretha Franklin, the “Queen of Soul,” becomes the first woman inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cinncinnati. Read more...

The playwright August Wilson receives a Pulitzer Prize for Fences, one in a series of plays about the black American experience in each decade of the twentieth century that Wilson will complete shortly before his death in 2005. Read more...

Reginald F. Lewis heads the leveraged buyout of international divisions of Beatrice International, valued at $985 million. Putting up $15 million of his own money, he acquires 51-percent equity in TLC Beatrice International Holdings, Inc., and becomes the first African American billionaire and owner of the largest black-owned business in the world, with revenues of $1.8 billion. Read more...

Clifton Wharton Jr. takes over the $70-billion Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association-College Retirement Equities Fund (TIAA-CREF), becoming one of the few African American CEOs of a Fortune 500 company. Read more...

Walt Frazier, the New York Knicks star, is elected to the Basketball Hall of Fame; Ervin “Magic” Johnson of the Los Angeles Lakers wins the NBA Most Valuable Player award. He will win it again in 1989 and 1990. Read more...

George Bell, the Toronto Blue Jays outfielder, is named the American League Most Valuable Player; Andre Dawson, the Chicago Cubs outfielder, is named the National League Most Valuable Playe. Read more...

Sales among African American businesses listed on the BE 100 exceed $3 billion. Companies on the list employ over 18,000 people. Auto dealers make up more then half the list and account for $1.35 billion in sales. Read more...

Yasuhiro Nakasone, the prime minister of Japan, meets with members of the Congressional Black Caucus and other black leaders after being accused of making racial slurs in a speech; Nakasone agrees to pursue Japanese investment in minority-owned American banks, to help initiate an exchange program between Japanese and African American students, and to locate Japanese companies in predominantly black areas. Read more...

Dick Gregory founds the health and nutrition business, Correction Connection, Inc., to market “Bahamian Diet,” a meal replacement drink made up of vitamins and minerals that allegedly assist in weight loss. Read more...

Black Enterprise names the publisher John H. Johnson “Businessman of the Decade.” Read more...

Beulah Mae Donald wins a $7 million judgment against the United Klans of America following the lynching of her son by Klan members. Read more...

Harold Washington wins reelection for a second term as Chicago's first black mayor. Read more...

Niara Sudarkasa becomes the first woman president of Lincoln University, the oldest black college in the country. Read more...

Major League Baseball renames the Rookie of the Year award the “Jackie Robinson Award,” to honor Robinson, the first ever Rookie of the Year. Read more...

Colin Powell is named the White House National Security Advisor. Read more...

Rita Dove wins the Pulitzer Prize for poetry for Thomas and Beulah. Read more...

Soft Sheen acquires two-thirds ownership of Dyke and Dryden Company, Great Britain's largest black-owned business.

Al Campanis, vice president for player personnel for the Los Angeles Dodgers, in a TV interview on the fortieth anniversary of Jackie Robinson's integration of major league baseball, tells the ABC reporter Ted Koppel that blacks “may not have some of the necessities to be a field manager or perhaps a general manager.” He also says they are physically unable to be top swimmers. He is fired by the Dodges within forty-eight hours.

Evan Mecham, the Republican governor of Arizona, faces a recall effort by citizens as a result of his decision to rescind state observance of the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday; the recall proposal has strong support from both Democrats and Republicans.

Terry McMillan publishes her first novel, Mama, depicting the troubled relationships between a mother and her family, community, and self during the 1960s. The novel sells out its first printing. Read more...

Toni Cade Bambara publishes the novel If Blessing Comes. Read more...

Doug Williams of the Washington Redskins is the first black quarterback to win a National Football League Super Bowl and be selected Super Bowl MVP.

Barbara Clementine Harris of Boston is the first woman to become a bishop in the Episcopal church. Read more...

The Black Women Mayor's Caucus is founded at the National Conference of Black Mayors. Read more...

African American women athletes win numerous medals at the winter and summer games. Florence Griffith-Joyner wins three gold medals and one silver medal in the summer Olympics, becoming the first U.S. woman to win four medals in one Olympic games; she breaks the world record in the 100-meter dash in the Olympic trials and sets a new world record at 200 meters during the games. Jackie Joyner-Kersee wins gold in the heptathlon. In the winter games, the figure skater Debi Thomas wins bronze, becoming the first African American woman to win a winter Olympics medal. Read more...

Juanita Kidd Stout is the first black woman to serve on a state supreme court, when she is appointed to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. Read more...

Pearl Bailey is awarded the Medal of Freedom by Ronald Reagan. Read more...

In his second run for the presidency, Jesse Jackson makes a strong showing in the Democratic primaries, winning almost seven million out of the twenty-three million votes cast. Read more...

The basketball player Michael Jordan signs a $25 million contract, making him the highest paid basketball player in history. Jordan wins his first Most Valuable Player award. He will win the award again in 1991, 1992, 1996, and 1998. Read more...

Arthur R. Ashe, the retired tennis star, publishes a three volume history of blacks in sports, Hard Road to Glory: A History of the African American Athlete. Read more...

Anita DeFrantz, a bronze medalist in rowing in the 1976 Montreal Olympics, becomes the first black woman to serve on the ninety-member International Olympic Committee. Read more...

MCA purchases Motown Records for $61 million. The purchase by MCA is viewed by the black community as a loss for black business. Read more...

Willie Stargell, who played for the Pittsburgh Pirates, becames the sixteenth player elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in his first year of eligibility. Read more...

Wes Unseld is elected to the Basketball Hall of Fame. Read more...

Black Enterprise revises their top African American business list as the "BE Industrial/Service 100," and the "BE Auto Dealer 100" to reflect the increasing diversity of African American businesses and to account for the success of blacks in the auto dealership industry. Total sales for businesses on the list are $6.1 billion; industrial/service companies account for over $4.1 billion. Read more...

The General Accounting Office of the federal government publicizes a report charging that the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) failed to properly investigate as many as 82 percent of the claims regarding job discrimination filed with the commission during a three-month period. Read more...

Jimmy “the Greek” Snyder, a CBS sports commentator, says that blacks are better athletes than whites because as slaves blacks were bred for size and strength. He says that a master would breed “his big black to his big woman so that he could have a big black kid." He also claims that blacks are taking over sports. ''They've got everything. If they take over coaching like everybody wants them to, there's not going to be anything left for the white people. I mean all the players are black. The only thing the whites control are the coaching jobs.” CBS immediately fires Snyder. Read more...

The novelist Toni Morrison wins a Pulitzer Prize for Beloved, which deals with the legacy of slavery in the years following the Civil War. The same year forty-eight black authors write an open letter to the New York Times Book Review to protest against Beloved not winning the National Book Award. (The award went to Pete Dexter’s Paris Trout.)Read more...

Demetrius Brown establishes an international metal trading firm, Fuci Metals, USA, in Chicago. His company does business in Europe, Chicago, and Russia.

In a leveraged buyout by Herman Cain from Pillsbury, Godfather's Pizza becomes the largest black-owned franchise.

Of the 340,000 African American enterprises, manufacturing companies represent only 1 percent.

For the first time, white manufacturers of African American hair care products capture more than 50 percent of the market.

Trey Ellis publishes Platitudes, a novel that departs from the artistic traditions of the Harlem Renaissance and Black Arts Movement and which represents a fusion of African American and white culture. Read more...

President George H. W. Bush names Colin Powell chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the first African American and the youngest man to fill the post. Read more...

Illusions, a thirty-four-minute short film written, produced, and directed by Julie Dash in 1983, is named Best Film of the Decade by the Black Filmmaker Foundation. Read more...

Queen Latifah releases her debut album All Hail the Queen. Read more...

Oprah Winfrey buys her own television and movie production studio, Harpo, becoming the first black woman and only the third woman in U.S. history to own her own production company. Read more...

Condoleezza Rice becomes the first African American director of Soviet and East European Affairs on the National Security Council. Read more...

Ron Brown is elected chairman of the Democratic Party, becoming the first African American to head a major political party. Read more...

Kenneth Chenault is appointed president of American Express Consumer Card and Financial Services Group, becoming one of the highest-ranking African Americans in the Fortune 500. Read more...

David Dinkins becomes the first black mayor of New York City. Read more...

L. Douglas Wilder is elected governor of Virginia, the first African American governor of any state. Read more...

The Center of Disease Control and Prevention reports that African Americans are twice as likely as whites to contract AIDS; one-half of all women in the United States who have the disease are black; about 70 percent of babies born with the disease are black, and one-fourth of all men who have AIDS are African American. Read more...

Dave Stewart, the Oakland Athletics pitcher, is named the World Series Most Valuable PlayerRead more...

Jerome Walton, the Chicago Cubs outfielder, is the National League Rookie of the Year. Read more...

Kevin Mitchell, San Francisco Giants outfielder, in named National League Most Valuable PlayerRead more...

For the first time, only black players are elected to the Basketball Hall of Fame: NBA stars K.C. Jones and Lenny Wilkins and William “Pop” Gates, who played on various black basketball teams in 1930s and 1940s and on the Harlem Globetrotters in 1950s. Read more...

The mayor of Los Angeles Tom Bradley wins reelection to a fifth term. Read more...

African American companies on the BE 100s list have annual sales of $6.8 billion. Read more...

The founder of Postro, Inc., Roland Laird integrates hip-hop music culture and comic books with the publication of his comic book MC Squared and the comic strip Griots. Read more...

Reginald Lewis unsuccessfully attempts to take TLC Beatrice public; he blames the “IPO Glass Ceiling” for his failure. Read more...

The world's largest African American insurance company, North Carolina Mutual Insurance Company, has $7.9 billion in policies in force. Read more...

Census Bureau reports black poverty at 31.6 percent versus 10.1 percent for whites; Labor Department reports black unemployment at 11.9 versus 4.3 for whites. Read more...

The American Council on Education reports that the number of black men attending college is declining while the number of black women students is rising; several reason are suggested for the decline in male college students, including military enrollment, prohibitive college costs, and the “easy money” to be had in drugs and crime. Read more...

When Joan Salmon Campbell is elected moderator of the Presbyterian Church, USA, she is the first black woman and sixth woman to head the church. Read more...

In Richmond v. Croson, the U.S. Supreme Court deals a heavy blow to affirmative action when it rules unconstitutional that a program requiring municipal contractors in Richmond, Virginia, give at least 30 percent of construction jobs to predominantly minority companies. Ruling that affirmative action is a “an unlawful form of reverse discrimination,” the Supreme Court begins a process of reversals on previous affirmative action rulings. Read more...

Six Ku Klux Klan members receive jail sentences and are fined for their part in harassing African Americans during a civil rights march ten years earlier in Decatur, Alabama. Read more...

The businessmen Peter Bynoe and Bertram M. Lee, the tennis legend Arthur Ashe, and the Democratic National Committeee chairman Ron Brown become the first minorities to own a franchise in the NBA with their purchase of the Denver Nuggets for $65 million.

Fortune 500 companies K-Mart, Chrysler, and Philip Morris commit to spending $2 million in advertising in the African American press.

IndeCorp Bank in Chicago is the largest of thirty-four black-owned banks.

Bill White is elected president of baseball's National League. This is the first time a black has held such a powerful position in major league baseball.

Cito Gaston becomes only the fourth black manager of a major league baseball team when he is hired to run Toronto Blue Jays.

FBI director William Sessions orders sweeping changes in bureau policy, including placing blacks and Hispanics on lists for promotions and ordering racial sensitivity training for all FBI employees.

The first nonpartisan African American summit convenes in New Orleans to discuss an African American agenda; more than 4,000 delegates from the United States, the District of Columbia, and the Virgin Islands are invited.

On sabbatical leave from Morehouse College where he is president of the Medical School, Louis Sullivan becomes secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services.

Art Shell is appointed head coach of the National Football League's Los Angeles Raiders. He is the first African American to manage an NFL team in the modern era, and the second African American coach in the NFL since Fritz Pollard served as palyer-coah for the Akron Pros in 1921.

Namibia becomes independent. Read more...

Colin Powell is the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the Persian Gulf War. Black soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines account for 20 percent of all U.S. forces to fight the war; black women account for 40 percent of women assigned to the theater. Fifteen percent personnel killed during the war were African American. Read more...

Clarence Thomas, chairman of the EEOC, is appointed judge on the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. Read more...

Nelson Mandela becomes the first black president of South Africa. Read more...

Sharon Pratt Kelly is elected mayor of Washington, D.C., becoming the first African American woman and the first district native to hold that post. Read more...

Russell Simmons launches Rush Communications, the top African American record company during the 1990s. Read more...

Rickey Henderson, the Oakland A's outfielder, wins the American League Most Valuable Player award; Barry Bonds, the San Francisco Giants outfielder, wins the award in the National League. Read more...

Sandy Alomar Jr. is the first black to be unanimously chosen American League Rookie of the Year; David Justice, the Atlanta Braves outfielder, is the National League Rookie of the Year. This is the third time that blacks have been named Rookie of the Year in both leagues in the same year. Read more...

Jack Johnson and Sugar Ray Robinson are elected to the Boxing Hall of Fame. Read more...

Chicago hosts the annual Black Expo, a national networking and recruiting convention for businesspeople and major corporations. Read more...

In the Fortune 500 and the top 1,000 industrial firms, only 0.6 percent of senior management are African American compared to the 95 to 97 percent who are white men. Read more...

Affected by attacks against minority set-aside programs, total revenues of companies on the BE 100s plateau at $6.8 billion. Read more...

Operation PUSH calls for a boycott of Nike products, claiming that black consumers purchase approximately 30 percent of the company's products but are not represented on Nike's board of directors or in the company's upper management. Read more...

Census Bureau reports that the average household income for blacks is $18,083, for Hispanics $21,921, for whites $30,406, and for Asians $36,102; 10 percent of whites live in poverty while 26.2 percent of Hispanics and 30.7 percent of blacks live in poverty. Read more...

African Americans own 138 AM and 68 FM radio stations. Read more...

Marcelite J. Harris is the first African American woman to hold the rank of brigadier general in the U.S. Air Force. Read more...

Roselyn Payne Epps, MD, becomes the first black woman to serve as president of the American Medical Association. Read more...

Elaine Weddington Steward becomes assistant general manager of the Boston Red Sox, becoming the first black woman executive in major league baseball. Read more...

President George H.W. Bush vetoes the Civil Rights Act of 1990; Senate attempts to override the president's veto, but is one vote short of the necessary two-thirds. The president reverses course and signs the Civil Rights Act in 1991. Read more...

Charles Johnson publishes the novel Middle Passage, the story of a black American who signs on with the crew of a slave ship; the critically acclaimed book receives the National Book Award. Read more...

Carl Jones targets the urban hip-hop fashion market with Threads 4 Life (Cross Colours).

Richard Parsons is the first African American to head a major savings association when he is appointed CEO of Dime Savings Bank.

The alleged failure to meet federal regulation standards forces the Freedom National Bank in Harlem, with $120 million in assets, to close.

The oldest surviving Afircan American bank, Consolidated Bank and Trust Company of Richmond (founded in 1903 as the St. Luke's Penny Savings Bank) reopens two failed black-owned savings and loans.

Carole Gist, a twenty-two-year-old native of Detroit, Michigan, is the first African American to be crowned Miss USA.

Black population is 29,987,060, or 12.1 percent of the total U.S. population.

The Quality Education for Minorities Project releases a report finding that minority students are taught in “separate and decidedly unequal” schools; the report makes recommendations aimed at making schools more responsive to the needs of minority students.

Ebony magazine celebrates its 45th anniversary. Read more...

John Edgar Wideman publishes his seventh novel, Philadelphia Fire, for which he is awarded his second PEN/Faulkner Award. A blend of documentary and fiction, the book tells of the aftermath of the 1985 MOVE bombing in Philadelphia by a militant African American group. Read more...

Margaret Walker publishes How I Wrote Jubilee and Other Essays, the story of how she brought to life Jubilee (1966), her historical novel and doctoral dissertation that depicted her maternal great-grandmother’s life as a slave. Read more...

Walter Mosley publishes the novel Devil in a Blue Dress; its realistic portrayal of strong black characters earns the author critical acclaim and a nomination by the Mystery Writers of America for best novel. It is later made into a successful movie starring Denzel Washington. Read more...

Ken Griffey Sr. and Ken Griffey Jr., both playing for the Seattle Mariners, hit back-to-back home runs, the only time a father and son have hit home runs in the same game. Read more...

Citing poor health and his advanced age, Justice Thurgood Marshall announces his retirement from the Supreme Court. Read more...

President Bush nominates Clarence Thomas, a conservative African American jurist, to replace Thurgood Marshall in the Supreme Court; a bitter confirmation fight ensues during which a female colleague, Anita Hill, accuses Thomas of sexual misconduct. Hill's testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee initiates a national discussion on sexual harassment. Despite vigorous opposition from civil rights groups and others, Clarence Thomas is confirmed as the 106th associate justice of the Supreme Court. Read more...

The Atlanta Braves third baseman Terry Pendleton wins the National League Most Valuable Player award. Read more...

With an IPO of $72.3 million, BET is the third African American publicly traded company. Read more...

According to the BE 100, the top 10 African American businesses are (1) TLC Beatrice International Holdings, Inc., of New York with revenues of $1.54 billion; (2) Johnson Publishing Company of Chicago with revenues of $261.4 million; (3) Philadelphia Coca-Cola Bottling Co., Inc., with revenues of $256 million; (4) H. J. Russell and Co. of Atlanta with revenues of $143.6 million; (5) Barden Communication, Inc., of Detroit with revenues of $91.2 million; (6) Garden State Cable TV of New York with revenues of $88 million; (7) Soft Sheen Products, Inc., of Chicago with revenues of $87.9 million; (8) RMS Technologies of New Jersey with revenues of $79.9 million; (9) Stop Shop and Save of Baltimore with revenues of $66 million; and (10) the Bing Group of Detroit with revenues of $64.9 million. Black businesses listed on the BE 100s list have a combined revenue of $7.169 billion. Read more...

The Justice Department releases its report on death-row inmates; although blacks account for 12.1 percent of the population, 40 percent of the inmates awaiting execution are African American. Read more...

Julie Dash releases Daughters of the Dust, the first feature film by an African American woman. Read more...

The Urban Institute, a nonpartisan economic and social policy research organization, releases its study on job discrimination, finding that whites seeking entry-level jobs are favored over equally qualified blacks. Read more...

Students at Hampton University hold a silent protest while President Bush delivers the commencement address; students are demonstrating against the president's policies regarding civil rights. Read more...

When the avowed racist and former Klan leader David Duke runs for the U.S. Senate in Louisiana, the NAACP launches a voter registration campaign that yields a 76 percent turnout of African American voters to defeat Duke. Read more...

Rioting erupts in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn when a car driven by a Jewish driver kills a young black boy; a Jewish rabbinical student is fatally stabbed during the riots. Read more...

The National Civil Rights Museum, housed in the former Lorraine Motel where Martin Luther King Jr. was shot, is dedicated in King's honor. Read more...

Kathryn Leary founds Leary Group, Inc., which develops markets for African American products in Japan. Read more...

Witness videotapes the beating of Rodney King, a black motorist, by Los Angeles police officers; the officers are indicted on charges of assault with a deadly weapon. Read more...

The National Association of Black Scuba Divers (NABS) is founded in Washington, D.C.

Shelby Steele, an integrationist opposed to racially determined affirmative action, publishes Content of Our Character and wins the National Book Critics Circle Award. Read more...

The Abuja Treaty signed in Abuja, Nigeria, creates the African Economic Community. It calls for the creation of an African Economic Community with a single currency by 2023 and an African Central Bank by 2028

A. G. Gaston is named “Black Entrepreneur of the Century” by Black Enterprise magazine. In response to the honor, Gaston says, “Money has no color. If you can build a better mousetrap, it won't matter whether you're black or white; people will buy it.” Read more...

Terry McMillian publishes Waiting to Exhale, the story of four intelligent, attractive, and unmarried middle-class black women. The novel holds a place on the New York Times bestseller list for months, sells three million copies, and is released as a film in 1995. Read more...

Carol Moseley Braun of Illinois becomes the first African American woman to be elected to the U.S. Senate; she is also the first African American senator from the Democratic Party. Read more...

Sports Illustrated names Arthur Ashe “Sportsman of the Year.” Read more...

Mae Jemison becomes the first African American woman in space, traveling as the science mission specialist in the seven-member crew aboard the space shuttle Endeavour. Read more...

Rioting erupts across the nation after the astonishing acquittal of the four officers who were recorded beating an unarmed Rodney King. Read more...

Spike Lee releases Malcolm X, based on the autobiography of the slain civil right leader. Read more...

The poet Derek Walcott wins the Nobel Prize for Literature. Read more...

Vernon Jordan serves as the head of President Clinton's transition team. Read more...

Russell Simmons launches the hip hop-inspired Phat Farm clothing line. Read more...

Barry Bonds, the San Francisco Giants outfielder, wins his second National League Most Valuable Player award. Read more...

According to the census, only 3 percent of African Americans own businesses. Read more...

African American businesses listed on the BE 100s list increase sales for the year to $7.9 billion. Auto dealers account for $3 billion of total sales. Read more...

The U.S. Commission on Minority Business Development releases a two-year report that recommends major modifications to the $4 billion Federal Minority Business Plan. Specifically, the commission charges that the plan steers African Americans into businesses with little potential for significant profits while denying them access to sufficient capital for success. Read more...

Michael Jordan earns $16 million in endorsements from McDonald's, Quaker Oats, Gatorade, Wheaties cereal, and Ball Park hot dogs. Three years later, he will earn more than twice that amount from endorsements. Read more...

The U.S. Olympic basketball team nicknamed the “Dream Team” wins the gold medal with a number of African American superstars, including Michael Jordan, Patrick Ewing, David Robinson, Karl Malone, Charles Barkley, and Scottie Pippin. Read more...

Lusia Harris Stewart, college basketball star and coach and Olympic player, is the first black woman elected to the Basketball Hall of Fame. Read more...

Barbara J. Jacket is the head coach of the U.S. women's track and field team at the Olympic Games in Barcelona, Spain; she is the second African American woman in this position (Nell Jackson was the first, in 1956). Jackie Joyner-Kersee becomes the first woman to repeat as the heptathlon gold medalist at the Barcelona Olympics. Read more...

Federal Reserve study shows evidence of bank discrimination against minorities applying for mortgages; measuring rejection rates for blacks, Hispanics, and whites, the study finds a 17 percent rejection rate for minorities compared to 11 percent rejection rate for whites. Read more...

Granite Broadcasting's IPO brings in $24 million on NASDAQ.

Michael S. Fields founds Open-Vision Technologies, a computer management services and software development firm that services clients such as Wells Fargo, Mercedes Benz, and Ford.

The James Produce Company is the oldest African American business still in operation. The wholesale produce distributor was founded in 1883 by C. H. James and run by four generations of his sons and grandsons.

When Vivian L. Fuller is named athletics director at Northeastern Illinois University, she becomes the first black female athletics director in the history of Division I, the National Collegiate Athletic Association's top competitive level.

American Council on Education releases its annual report confirming that the number of minority students attending college increased during the 1980s.

Bill Clinton is elected president; black voters provide the margin of victory in many states.

U.S. Department of Education's report on high school dropout rates shows a 13.6 percent rate for African American students, 35.3 percent for Hispanics, and 8.9 percent for whites.

Pearl Stewart becomes editor of the Oakland Tribune and is the first black woman to edit a daily newspaper of a major U.S. city. Read more...

Toni Morrison publishes the novel Jazz, set in what is presumed to be 1920s Harlem. Inspired by the photographs of the African American photographer James Van Der Zee, the narrative employs an improvisational storytelling technique. Praise for this book is not as great as for her previous works, but it nonetheless appears on the New York Times bestseller list. Read more...

Apartheid ends in South Africa. Read more...

Rita Dove, winner of the 1987 Pulitzer Prize in poetry, becomes the first African American poet laureate of the United States; she is the youngest person ever named to this position. Read more...

Joycelyn Elders becomes the first African American woman to serve as Surgeon General. Read more...

Toni Morrison receives the Nobel Prize in literature becoming the first African American woman to win the highest literary honor in the world. Read more...

Hazel Rollins O'Leary is sworn in as secretary of energy in January, becoming the first woman and African American to hold this position. Read more...

Michael Jordan retires from basketball. Read more...

President Clinton appoints Alexis M. Herman as director of the White House Public Liaison Office and assistant to the president. Read more...

Reginald Lewis, the founder and CEO of TLC Beatrice, the billion-dollar African American company, dies in New York. Read more...

Ronald Brown appointed the first African American secretary of commerce. Read more...

Frank Thomas, the Chicago White Sox first baseman is unanimously chosen the American League Most Valuable PlayerRead more...

Barry Bonds, the San Francisco Giants outfielder, wins his third National League Most Valuable Player award. Read more...

James Morgan, the last of the Buffalo Soldiers who protected the American western frontier, dies at age 100. Read more...

African American business listed in the BE 100s list report $9 billion in annual sales; twelve companies report more than $100 million in revenues. According to the list, African American financial institutions hold $4.2 billion in assets. Read more...

The former Globetrotter Mannie Jackson and other African American investors acquire the Harlem Globetrotters for $6 million, making the team the first wholly black-owned professional sports franchise. Read more...

Angry over the results of the Anita Hill-Clarence Thomas hearings, Carol Moseley Braun seeks and gains a place on the previously all-male Senate Judiciary Committee. Read more...

PolyGram buys Motown Records from MCA for $325 million. Read more...

In Milwaukee, Valerie Daniels-Carter, the owner of V&J Foods, Inc., acquires seventeen Burger King franchises, bringing the total number of Burger King restaurants under her ownership to thirty-two. Read more...

Yvette Lee Bowser forms SisterLee Productions and becames the first African American woman to develop her own television series, Living Single for Fox and Warner Bros. Read more...

African Americans own only 7 percent, or 658 of 9,086, McDonald's fastfood restaurants.

IVAX Corporation, a white-owned cosmetics company that manufactures the Flori Roberts cosmetic and skin care line for women of color, acquires for $67 million Johnson Products, Inc., the largest black-owned manufacturer of ethnic hair care products.

Frank Mercado-Valdes creates African Heritage Networks, having convinced major movie production houses like Warner Bros. and Paramount to license black-oriented TV and movie properties, to distribute them to major TV markets throughout the country, and to sell advertising on those same stations when the shows air.

In Atlanta, NDI Video, Inc., becomes the first African American company to own a Blockbuster franchise when it purchases twenty-three outlets.

In one year, the black-owned United Bank of Philadelphia increases its assets nearly fivefold through acquisition, from $18 million in 1992 to $87 million.

President Clinton appoints a record number of African Americans to positions in his administration, including secretaries of agriculture, energy, and commerce; head of veterans affairs; and surgeon general.

Cornel West publishes Race Matters, a collection of essays on African American culture that will be his most influential work. Read more...

Ishmael Reed publishes Japanese By Spring, a fictional satire of neoconservatives and race and gender politics in a California college. Read more...

Maya Angelou reads “On the Pulse of Morning” at the presidential inauguration of Bill Clinton, becoming the first black poet to participate in this ceremony. Read more...

Nathaniel Mackey publishes the epistolary novel Djbot Baghostus's Run, which includes letters written by a fictional jazz musician to a mysterious figure called Angel Dust. Mackey’s unconventional style of writing blends music with narration, using words as if they were musical notes or rhythms. Read more...

The sisters Sarah “Sadie” and Elizabeth “Bessie” Delany publish their joint autobiography, Having our Say: The Delany Sisters’ First 100 Years, written when both were over one hundred years old. It becomes a best seller and is adapted into a Broadway play. Read more...

Dr. Jocelyn Elders is pressured to resign as Surgeon General after making controversial statements regarding drug use and sex education. Read more...

Frank Thomas, the Chicago White Sox first baseman, is chosen American League Most Valuable Player for the second year in a row. Read more...

African American companies on the BE 100s list reach $10 billion in annual sales. Each of the top-ten African American businesses on the list employ more tan 1,000 people. Read more...

Byron De La Beckwith, a white supremacist, is convicted of the 1963 murder of the civil rights leader Medgar Evers and sentenced to life in prison. Read more...

Earvin “Magic” Johnson purchases a 5-percent stake in the Los Angeles Lakers basketball team for $10 million. Read more...

Florida legislature agrees to pay up to $150,000 to survivors of the Rosewood Massacre, in which a white mob burned every house in the small black community of Rosewood in 1923 while looking for a black man who had allegedly assaulted a white woman. Read more...

The retired basketball star Isaiah Thomas buys 10 percent of the Toronto Raptors, an NBA team worth $125 million. Read more...

Designer Karl Kani, born Carl Williams, leaves Cross Colours to establish Karl Kani Infinity. His line of fashionable urban wear grosses $43 million the first year, possibly from its high exposure as the fashion of choice for black hip hop and music artists. Jeans make up 45 percent of the company's annual sales. Kani's fashions also sell in England, Germany, France, the Czech Republic, Japan, and Australia. Read more...

Sylvia Rhone is named chairman and CEO of Elektra Entertainment Group (EEG), making her the first woman and the only black person in the history of the recording industry to reach this level at a major record label. She holds the position until 2004. Read more...

Denny's Restaurants agree to pay $54 million to settle lawsuits by African Americans who claim they were discriminated against by the restaurant chain. Read more...

The former football star O.J. Simpson is arrested and charged with the murder of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend, Ron Goldman. Read more...

Maya Angelou receives the Spingarn Medal for excellence in literature. Read more...

Minorities own 14 percent of all Burger King's franchises; 3.5 percent are African American. To encourage minority franchise ownership and increase the number of minority suppliers, Burger King establishes a $100 million set-aside fund.

Of the 23,000 movie theaters in the country, African Americans own only seven.

Six firms listed on the BE 100s and four African American media companies found Urban Communications, L.P., in order to compete for narrow- and broadband personal communication services licenses auctioned by the Federal Communications Commission.

Beverly Harvard of Atlanta, Georgia, becomes the first African American woman to reach the rank of chief of police in a major U.S. city.

Dexter Scott King, the youngest son of the late Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King, is named chief executive and chairman of the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change.

Brent Staples, a journalist for the New York Times, publishes the memoir Parallel Time: Growing up in Black and White. It will win the Anisfield-Wolff Book Award the following year.

The Haitian American writer Edwidge Danticat publishes her first novel, Breath, Eyes, Memory, the story of a young woman balancing the influences of two different cultures. Read more...

The historian and biographer David Levering Lewis wins the Pulitzer Prize for his biography W. E. B. Du Bois: Biography of a Race, 1868–1919. This first work in a two-volume series also wins the Parkman Prize in History and the Bancroft Prize in American History and Diplomacy. Read more...

John Edgar Wideman publishes Fatheralong: A Meditation on Fathers and Sons, Race and Society, a nonfiction work examining his family history in a way that challenges contemporary definitions of race. Read more...

Nathan McCall publishes his autobiography Makes Me Wanna Holler: A Young Black Man in America, which chronicles his journey from street life and prison to being a journalist for the Washington Post.

Rita Dove is named poet laureate of the United States. She is the first African American to win the appointment. Read more...

The scholar and critic Henry Louis Gates Jr. publishes Colored People, his memoir of growing up in segregated West Virginia. Read more...

Yusef Komunyakaa wins the Pulitzer Prize for poetry for Neon Vernacular, a collection of poems reflecting his upbringing in Bogalusa, Louisiana, and heavily inflected with a jazz and blues sensibility. Read more...

John Hope Franklin, historian and African American studies scholar, receives the Spingarn Medal. Read more...

The WB Network is launched, marking a new trend in programming among the major television networks in which black entertainers are increasingly featured. Read more...

President Clinton appoints Shirley Ann Jackson to serve as chair of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Read more...

Ruth J. Simmons is named the ninth president of Smith College, becoming the first African American woman to head a top-ranked American college or university. Read more...

The NBA star Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is elected to the Basketball Hall of Fame. Read more...

After failing to succeed in professional baseball, Michael Jordan returns to basketball and the Chicago Bulls. He will lead the Bulls to three more championships in 1996, 1997, and 1998. Read more...

Kweisi Mfume is unanimously elected president and chief executive of the NAACP. Read more...

The college and Olympic basketball star Cheryl Miller is elected to the Basketball Hall of Fame. Read more...

Paul Robeson is elected to the College Football Hall of Fame. Read more...

Myrlie Evers-Williams, widow of slain civil rights activist Medgar Evers, becomes chair of the NAACP. Read more...

American Express appoints Kenneth Chenault vice chairman. Read more...

Mo Vaughn, the Boston Red Sox first baseman, is chosen American League Most Valuable Player. Read more...

Despite the achievements of the top African American companies, 56 percent of all African American businesses grossed less than $10,000 per year and only fifteen companies employ more than 500 employees. Read more...

There are eleven African American corporations publicly traded on major stock exchanges. Read more...

The combined revenues of the top 100 African American businesses and auto dealerships are $13 billion. Auto dealerships account for $5.7 billion in sales. Read more...

A deadly outbreak of Ebola virus kills thousands in Africa. Read more...

The University of California votes to eliminate affirmative action policies with regard to admissions and hiring. Read more...

The hip hop entrepreneurs Shawn “Jay-Z” Carter and Damon Dash found Roc-A-Fella Enterprises. Read more...

Jesse Jackson Jr., the son of civil rights leader Jesse Jackson, is elected representative from Illinois's Second Congressional District. Read more...

Johnson Publishing is the second-largest black-owned business and the largest African American consumer-oriented company with $316.2 million in annual revenue and 2,000 employees. Read more...

Marcelite J. Harris becomes the first African American woman to achieve the rank of major general in the U.S. Air Force. Read more...

America Online (AOL) acquires a 15-percent stake in the joint venture NetNoir, an online portal with a global, Afrocentric focus. Hackers routinely attack the site and post racist and white-supremicist messages.

Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream appoint Robert Holland CEO; he will be fired a year later despite improvements in the company's financial performance.

Corporate leaders of African American corporations found a political action committee (PAC) to battle the further dismantling of affirmative action programs. The organizers include some of the top black business leaders: Earl Graves, the publisher of Black Enterprise; Robert Johnson from BET; Don Cornwell of Granite Broadcasting; Emma Chappell of United Bank of Philadelphia; and Calvin Grigsby of Grigsby, Branford and Co., Inc.

In Detroit, Dan Barden sells Barden Cablevision to white investors for $100 million.

The investment banker Leslie Corley found Convenience Corporation of America, which acquires 146 7-Eleven stores in the Midwest.

Chelsi Pearl Smith of Texas becomes the first African American to win the Miss Universe pageant.

Due to pressure from Senate Republicans and antiabortion groups, Dr. Henry Foster fails in his bid to become surgeon general.

Qubilah Bahiyah Shabazz, the daughter of the late Malcolm X, is arrested and charged with plotting to kill Louis Farrakhan, leader of the Nation of Islam.

Dorothy West publishes her second novel, The Wedding, which deals with assimilation and miscegenation; the novel becomes a best-seller. Read more...

Harryette Mullen publishes the poetry collection Muse and Drudge, which mixes cultural commentary with humor and wordplay. Read more...

Rita Dove publishes the collection of poems Mother Love, which draws on ancient Greek mythology and explores relationships between mothers and daughters. Read more...

Organized by Louis Farrakhan, the Million Man March draws thousands of mostly African American men to Washington, D.C. for a day of “unity, atonement, and brotherhood.” Read more...

Ann M. Fudge, president and CEO of Maxwell House Coffee Company, is the highest-ranking African American woman in white corporate America. Read more...

African American women constitute 6.5 percent of enlisted personnel in the armed services. Read more...

The golfer Tiger Woods earns more in endorsements than any other golfer in history, with a total of $60 million in contracts. Read more...

Derek Jeter, the Yankees shortstop, is unanimously named the American League Rookie of the Year. Read more...

African American businesses on the BE 100s list increase their annual revenues to $13 billion; twenty-five companies report more than $100 million in revenues. Read more...

The recording star Lauryn Hill establishes the Refugee Project, a nonprofit organization that seeks to improve the lives of disadvantaged youth who have become, in effect, refugees in their own country. Read more...

The hip hop entrepreneur Percy “Master P” Miller creates Bout It, Inc., to run his hip hop label, No Limit Records. Read more...

With the publication of Ebony South Africa, Johnson Publishing expands into the African market. Read more...

The National Association of Black Owned Broadcasters (NABOB) reports that African Americans owned 189 radio stations. Read more...

Cynthia McKinney, of the Democratic Party, is reelected to the U.S. House of Representatives after district lines are redrawn, making her district predominately white. Read more...

Herman Cain, CEO and president of Godfather's Pizza, becomes the largest black franchise owner when he expands to 525 restaurants.

Roy Roberts, general manager of the Pontiac-GMC Division, is the highest-ranking African American executive in the automobile industry.

President Clinton signs into law the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act, a welfare reform plan that replaces aid to families with dependent children with a system that requires work in exchange for time-limted assistance; the bill contains strong work requirements, a performance bonus to reward states for moving welfare recipients into jobs, comprehensive child support enforcement, and supports for families moving from welfare to work—including increased funding for child care and guaranteed medical coverage.

August Wilson’s play Seven Guitars opens on Broadway. Set in Pittsburgh, the drama explores racial injustice, community, and the destructive effects of money for those who lack it. Read more...

Jamaica Kincaid publishes the novel Autobiography of My Mother, her most critically acclaimed and controversial work. It borrows from the life of her Caribbean grandparents and mother, detailing the isolation of women and the victimization of the female body. Read more...

John Edgar Wideman publishes Cattle Killing, a novel set in eighteenth-century Philadelphia. Read more...

Terry McMillan publishes How Stella Got Her Groove Back, the story of a mother struggling to find balance in her life after her marriage ends. In 1998 the book is made into a film starring Angela Bassett, Taye Diggs, and Whoopi Goldberg. Read more...

Walter Mosley publishes the detective novel Little Yellow Dog. It is part of a series featuring the private investigator Easy Rawlins. Read more...

Approximately 1.5 million African American women gather in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, reaffirming the power of sisterhood. Read more...

President Clinton offers an apology to the descendants of the African Americans involved in the infamous Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment from 1932 to 1972. Read more...

The black Latino pitcher Livan Hernandez, of the Florida Marlins, is named the World Series Most Valuable Player. Read more...

African American businesses on the BE 100s list exceed annual revenues of $14 billion and employ more than 55,000 people. TLC Beatrice, with over $2 billion in revenues, is the largest African American corporation. Read more...

Ken Griffey Jr., the Seattle Mariners outfielder, is unanimously chosen the American League Most Valuable PlayerRead more...

Laurent Kabila takes power in Zaire and renames the country the Democratic Republic of Congo (Kinshasa). Read more...

The “Wall Street Project,” founded by Jesse Jackson, head of the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition, is designed to encourage white corporations to invest in inner-city and rural communities. The billionaire real estate mogul Donald Trump donates office space to the project. Read more...

Tiger Woods becomes the first black golfer to win the Masters. Read more...

The largest museum in the world devoted to African American history opens in Detroit, Michigan. Read more...

Leslie Corley sells his majority interest in Convenience Corporation of America (which owns nearly 150 Seven-Eleven stores).

The second largest African American business, Mel Farr Automotive Group, reports revenues of $573.1 million for the year.

Alexis M. Herman becomes the nation's twenty-third secretary of labor and the first African American to head the labor department.

New York City police officers beat and sexually assault Haitian immigrant Abner Louima; the high-profile case brings police brutality to the public's attention.

Chester Himes’s novel Yesterday Will Make You Cry is re-released forty-five years after its original publication; a narrative of seven years in a state prison, it is published as the author first wrote it. Read more...

The Harvard Law School professor Randall Kennedy publishes Race, Crime, and the Law, which tracks discrimination in the criminal justice system. The book will win the 1998 Robert F. Kennedy Book Award. Read more...

Lani Guinier, founder of Commonplace, a nonprofit organization dedicated to improving public discourse on racial issues, is the first African American woman to become a tenured professor at the Harvard Law School. Read more...

Myrlie Evers-Williams receives the Spingarn Medal for her forty years of leadership and service in the Civil Rights Movement. Read more...

Kenneth J. Chenault, the president and chief operating officer of American Express, is the number two executive at the company. Chenault, who earned a law degree from Harvard, is the highest-ranking African American executive in white corporate America. Read more...

Robert Johnson, CEO and founder of BET, creates BETMovies, the first African American movie cable channel. Johnson pledges $100 million to produce theatrical films and made-for-cable movies. Read more...

The first publicly traded African American company on the New York Stock Exchange, BET Holdings, Inc., reverts to a privately held company. Robert Johnson's BET Holdings II, Inc., holds 65-percent ownership and Liberty Media Group, a subsidiary of TeleCommunications, Inc., owns 35 percent of the company. Read more...

The black Latino Chicago Cubs outfielder Sammy Sosa wins the National League Most Valuable Player award. Read more...

In 1998 blacks constitute 77 percent of players in the NBA, 64 percent of the Women's NBA, 65 percent of the NFL, and 15 percent of major league baseball players. In Division I colleges 60 percent of all men's basketball players and 51 percent of football players are black. In women's basketball, 35 percent of all Division I basketball players and 31 percent of cross country and track and field athletes are black. Read more...

An FBI report notes that crimes in which race is a motivating factor have declined from 5,396 to 4,710 during the period of 1996 to 1970. Read more...

The first successful black technology company Maxima Corporation falls victim to the "dot com bust" and files for reorganization in bankruptcy court. Its revenues dipped to $5 million, a fraction of the $60 million earned at its prime or the $31 million earned in 1997.

Chapman Holdings, Inc., founded by Nathan A. Chapman in Baltimore, is the first publicly traded African American securities brokerage firm, with an IPO of $9 million on the NASDAQ Small Cap Market under the ticker symbol “CMAN.”

Edward Gardner sells Soft Sheen, the black hair products manufacturing company founded in 1964, to Paris-based L'Oreal, the largest cosmetic company in the world.

The former Motown president Jheryl Busby, the former basketball star Magic Johnson, and the entertainer Janet Jackson purchase the controlling interest in the Los Angeles Founders National Bank (founded in 1991) for $2.5 million. The bank's assets total $100 million.

The former Indianapolis Colts football star Donnell Thompson, CEO of Thompson Hospitality, L.L.C., signs a contract with Marriott to open two multimillion-dollar Marriott-brand Fairfield Inn franchises, one in Macon, Georgia, and the other in Orangeburg, South Carolina.

In a reversal of the trend in African American hair care manufacturing, the publicly traded black-owned firm Carson, Inc., purchases Johnson Products Company from IVAX for around $85 million.

Travelers Group chairman and CEO Sanford Weil co-sponsors the first Wall Street Project Conference, the "Trillion Dollar Roundtable,” attended by leading government, business, and labor officials.

Texaco settles a class action suit brought by its African American employees.

Toni Morrison publishes the novel Paradise. Set in civil-rights-era Oklahoma, the story's protagonists are children whose parents moved during the Great Migration. Read more...

Serena Williams becomes the first black woman to win the U.S. Open and also, along with her older sister Venus, the first black woman tennis star. Read more...

Al Sharpton of New York inaugurates the first Invitational Summit on Multicultural Markets and Media, which proposes the “Right to Equal Advertising” and demands that white corporations funnel more money into Latino and African American media outlets. Read more...

Ann Williams is confirmed as President Bill Clinton's nominee for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. She is the first African American appointed to that position. Read more...

The black Latino relief pitcher of the New York Yankees is named the World Series Most Valuable Player. Read more...

The Atlanta Braves third baseman Chipper Jones wins the National League Most Valuable Player award. Read more...

The entertainer and entrepreneur Bill Cosby acquires a stake in the NBA's New Jersey Nets. Read more...

Salton, a little-known grill manufacturing company, buys the rights to use the boxer George Foreman's name for $127.5 million in cash and $10 million in stock. Foreman reportedly receives as much as $54 million a year from the sale of the George Foreman Grill. Read more...

During the 1990s, Tupac Shakur, Dr. Dre, Sean "P. Diddy" Combs, and Jay-Z emerge as international entrepreneurs in a diverse range of entertainment and media-related industries, marking a sharp contrast to earlier generations of entertainers who were often misused by their managers and record labels. Read more...

At the second Rainbow/PUSH Wall Street Project conference, the keynote speaker, President Bill Clinton, announces that he will propose legislation granting tax credits to corporations that invest in underserved areas and that he will spearhead the expansion of loan programs for small and disadvantaged businesses. Read more...

Carolyn Peck, who coached the 1999 Purdue women's basketball team, becomes the first African American woman coach to win a national championship in women's college basketball. She is also the first woman to receive the New York Athletic Club's Winged Foot Award. Read more...

The company Radio One, run by its CEO and founder Catherine Liggins Hughes, debuts on NASDAQ, with an IPO of 6.5 million shares of Class A Common Stock at $24 a share. Read more...

C.H. James and Son, the oldest firm on the BE 100s list and a major supplier for McDonald's, sells its Los Angeles subsidiary, North American Produce, for $10 million.

L'Oreal acquires the top two black-owned haircare companies, Johnson Products and Soft Sheen. The AHBAI laments that mature, decades-old black-owned hair care enterprises are being forced out of business.

Siméus Foods International, the largest black-owned food manufacturer, acquires Fast Food Merchandisers, Inc., a North Carolina meat-processing firm. SFI's customers include Denny's, Quincy's Steak House, Popeye's Chicken, and T.G.I. Friday's.

Specialized Packaging Group, the largest black-owned carton company, signs a $100-million deal with Procter and Gamble's Fabric and Home Care powder line, which includes products such as Tide, Cheer, Swiffer, Puffs, Always, and Gain.

Angelique Walker-Smith becomes the first African American woman to graduate from the doctor of ministry program at Princeton Theological Seminary.

Amadou Diallo is shot forty-one times and killed by New York City police in the doorway of his apartment building in the Bronx; local residents and prominent citizens, including David Dinkins, Carl McCall, Ossie Davis, and Ruby Dee, protest police brutality and hold daily rallies until the four officers are indicted.

John A. Williams publishes Clifford’s Blues, the fictional diary of a gay black jazz musician in 1930s Germany who becomes a concentration-camp houseboy and musician. Read more...

Ralph Ellison’s novel Juneteenth is published posthumously by his literary executor, based on drafts that Ellison left. The work explores many of the same themes as Invisible Man, such as racial identity and the importance of heritage in contemporary America. Read more...

Marion Jones, the fastest woman in the world, earns three gold medals, winning the 100-meter dash, the 200-meter dash, and the 1,600-meter relay, and two bronze medals, in the long jump and the 400-meter relay. She is the first woman to win five medals at one Olympics. Hazel Clark (the winner), her sister Joetta Clark-Diggs (the third-place finisher), and their sister-in-law Jearl Miles-Clark (the second-place finisher) make U.S. Olympic history when they compete together on the 800-meter race team in Sydney, Australia. Read more...

Venus Williams wins the women's singles title at Wimbledon, the first African American woman to do so since Althea Gibson won the tournament in 1957. Read more...

Paul Kagame becomes the first Tutsi president of Rwanda. Read more...

Tiger Woods becomes the youngest player to win all four major golf championships—the British Open, the Masters, the PGA Championship, and the U.S. Open. Read more...

The New York Yankees shortstop Derek Jeter is named the World Series Most Valuable PlayerRead more...

According to the Census Bureau, changes made in semantics and racial categories cause seismic shifts in the picture of the nation's population; the number of Hispanics and those identifying themselves as mixed race skyrockets. Read more...

For the first time the nation's largest black-owned business on the BE 100s list is the auto dealership Mel Farr Automotive Group, with $596.6 million in sales in 1998. Read more...

Ed Lewis, CEO and chairman of Essence Communications, Inc., which publishes Essence magazine, confirms a deal to join with Time, a subsidiary of Time Warner, Inc. Read more...

The year 2000 represents a record number of black movie successes. Movies like Keenen Ivory Wayans' Scary Movie; Nutty Professor II, starring Eddie Murphy; and Big Momma's House, starring Martin Lawrence gross more than $100 million on the domestic market. Wayans becomes the highest-grossing black director of all time. Scary Movie grosses over $150 million, surpassing the record held by Sidney Poitier's Stir Crazy (1980), which grossed $101 million. Read more...

The San Diego Padres outfielder Tony Gwynn and his wife Alicia's company Gwynn Sports announces a deal to build one hundred new Church's Chicken restaurants in California at the rate of five to seven stores per year over the next fifteen years. Read more...

Bob Johnson, CEO and chairman of BET Holdings II, creates DC Air to become the second African American to own and operate a major regional airline. (In 1983 Michael Hollis launched Air Atlanta, which went bankrupt in 1987.. Read more...

The basketball legend Michael Jordan becomes president of basketball operations for the Washington Wizards. Read more...

Anthony Ervin becomes the first black to make the U.S. Olympic swimming team. Read more...

For the first time in its 213-year history, a woman—Vashti Murphy McKenzie—is bishop of the AME Church. Read more...

The CBS President and CEO Mel Karmazin and the Clear Channel Communications chairman and CEO Lowry Mays co-chair the National Broadcasting Fund, which plans to raise $1 billion to increase minority and female TV and radio station ownership. However, key minority groups like the National Association of Black Owned Broadcasters (NABOB) and the Black Broadcasters Alliance are excluded from the fund.

Charles (Chuck) H. James III sells ProduceOnline.com (which streamlines transactions between wholesale buyers and sellers of fresh produce) for $20 million less than a year after he founds the company business. James is a fourth-generation produce entrepreneur, a member of the oldest black-owned family enterprise in the country, C. H. James.

The hip hop producer Damien Dash's company, DME Interactive Holdings, Inc. (the first publicly traded black-owned Internet company), partners with America Online to create “Places of Color,” which provides Internet access and customized content to minorities.

The hip hop rapper and entrepreneur Master P (Percy Miller) debuts at number twenty-five on the BE 100s list. Christening himself “the ghetto Bill Gates,” Miller's company in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, No Limit Enterprises, is involved in ventures ranging from music and film to real estate to toy merchandising.

Julia W. Taylor, the only African American female bank president in the country, retires from the Mechanics and Farmers Bank in North Carolina. During her tenure, the bank's assets grew $53 million in 1983 to approximately $157 million by her retirement.

The Los Angeles Lakers all-star player Kobe Bryant, 21, acquires a 50-percent interest in an Italian-league basketball team, making him one of the first athletes to own a franchise while still active in the sport. NBA regulations prohibit active players from owning NBA teams.

Raytheon, defense-industry leader, contracts several minority-owned money management firms, including NCM Capital Management Group in North Carolina, Ariel Capital Management in Chicago, and MDL Capital Management in Pittsburgh, to oversee its $800 million pension fund. The Rainbow/PUSH Coalition's Wall Street Project brokers the deal as part of an effort to expand Raytheon's diversity initiatives beyond employment practices to external partnerships.

Royal Caribbean International contracts the Mingo Group, an black-owned advertising agency, to design ads to help RCI break into the $4.3-billion African American travel market.

A study reveals that minority entrepreneurs are dissatisfied with the Small Business Administration's 8(a) program, designed to help minorities secure federal contracts.

Tarrus L. Richardson co-founds ICV Capital Partners, LLC, a $130-million private investment firm. ICV is the largest private equity firm focused exclusively on investing in America's inner-city markets and/or minority markets.

The black-owned Boston Bank of Commerce acquires the deposits and assets of Miami's Peoples National Bank of Commerce, creating the first interstate black-owned bank.

The National Association of Urban Bankers, an organization of minority financial institutions and bankers established in 1974, changes its name to the Urban Financial Services Coalition.

Marlon St. Julien becomes the first black jockey in seventy-nine years to ride in the Kentucky Derby. He comes in seventh place.

Census figures indicate that the black population of the United States is 34,658,190; the figure increases to 36, 419,434 when African Americans are counted as race alone or in combination with one or more races; blacks make up between 12.3 percent and 12.9 percent of the total population.

Donna Brazille becomes manager of Al Gore's presidential campaign; she is the first African American woman to lead a presidential campaign.

In the closest presidential race in U.S. history, George W. Bush defeats former vice president Al Gore by 763 votes; charges of irregularities are made by African Americans in Florida who were left off registration lists, or intimidated by state troopers and other officials. Nonetheless, the NAACP reports the largest African American voter turnout in twenty years.

More than 50,000 people protest the flying of the Confederate flag in Columbia, South Carolina; NAACP reports that this is the largest civil rights demonstration in the South to date.

Colin Powell becomes President Bush's secretary of state; Roderick Page is named secretary of education. Read more...

Michael Jordan, arguably the greatest basketball player ever, comes out of retirement to join the Washington Wizards. Read more...

Condoleezza Rice becomes the first African American appointed as National Security Advisor. Read more...

Kenneth Chenault is named CEO of American Express. Read more...

Ruth Simmons becomes the eighteenth president of Brown University and the first African American woman to lead an Ivy League university. Read more...

Federal judge commutes the death sentence of former Black Panther and journalist Mumia Abu-Jamal, whose case had become a cause célèbre of the anti-death penalty movement. Read more...

John Cheney is elected to the Basketball Hall of Fame for his career as a college coach, both at historically black Cheney State University (where he compiled an astounding record of 225 wins and 59 losses) and at Temple University (499 wins and 238 losses). Read more...

One Thousand Churches Connected launches a national economic literacy initiative that aims to involve twenty churches in fifty cities with large African American populations. Read more...

Robert L. Johnson sells BET, the largest African American television network, to Viacom for over $2 billion. Johnson is one of the few African American billionaires, with a personal worth of about $1.63 billion. He is also a vice chairman and the largest shareholder at Viacom. Read more...

The San Francisco Giants outfielder Barry Bonds hits 73 home runs in one season, the most home runs ever hit in a single season. The same season, Bonds wins his fourth National League Most Valuable Player award. Read more...

The BE 100s list 290 black-owned companies employing more than 83,000 people with revenues of $19.7 billion. Read more...

Joseph Kabila becomes president of Congo-Kinshasa after the assassination of his father. Read more...

The National Conference of Black Mayors announces that the number of African American mayors is 480. Read more...

Shani Davis becomes first black to make the U.S. Olympic skating team as a speed skater. Read more...

A new $200 million, black-owned cable station, NUE-TV, is launched. NUE-TV is headed by Dennis Brownlee, a former satellite TV executive; Robert Townsend, former head of Bell Atlantic's video-on-demand project; and entertainment mogul Quincy Jones. Read more...

Pamela Thomas-Graham, a Harvard Law School graduate, is named president and chief operating officer of CNBC. She is the highest-ranking African American in the cable news industry. Read more...

African Americans oppose the president's selection of John Ashcroft for attorney general; Ashcroft is known to have opposed affirmative action and a school desegregation plan for Saint Louis while he was the state's attorney general. Read more...

According to the report Falling Through the Net: Toward Digital Inclusion, released by the United States Department of Commerce's National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), between 1998 and 2000, African Americans' Internet penetration grew 110 percent compared with whites, whose growth rate was 55 percent.

Boston Bank of Commerce and Founders National Bank in Los Angeles merge to become the first black-owned banking chain.

Brentwood Baptist Church in Houston is the first church to own and operate a McDonald's hamburger franchise within its facilities.

With the purchase of the Detroit Dogs in the American Basketball Association, Gregory Terrell and Arthus Blackwell, join the small group of African Americans to own sport franchises. Terrell owns a Detroit accounting firm and Blackwell co-owns the Greektown Casino in Detroit. Greg Davis, owner of the Chicago Skyliners in the ABA, is another African American owner in that league; Davis owns several radio stations in Georgia and North Carolina.

The navy awards a $698 million, ten-year contract (the largest single Small Business Administration 8[a] contract ever) to TeamQualtec, a black-owned company headed by J. Maria Whitmore.

Super Pride Markets, a Baltimore-based grocery store chain, closes business. The president and owner Oscar A. Smith Jr. started working at the store as a clerk for $1.65 per hour. He became president of the company in 1985 and purchased the company in 1992 after its founder Charles Thurgood died.

President Bill Clinton awards Irene Morgan the Presidential Citizens Medal.

Colson Whitehead publishes his second novel John Henry Days, set in present-day West Virginia. The novel satirizes heroism while examining how young African Americans relate to their history. The novel is a Pulitzer Prize and National Book Critics Circle Award finalist.

David Levering Lewis wins a second Pulitzer Prize for the second installment of his biography W. E. B. DuBois: The Fight for Equality and the American Century, 1919–1963. He is the first author to win two Pulitzer Prizes in biography for back-to-back volumes. Read more...

Halle Berry becomes the first African American woman to win an Oscar for Best Actress, for her performance in Monster's Ball; Denzel Washington wins the Oscar for Best Actor. It is the first time in the history of the Academy Awards that the top acting honors go to African Americans. Read more...

Venus and Serena Williams are the first African American women to be simultaneously ranked number one and number two in tennis. Read more...

With gross sales of $285 million, Oprah Winfrey's Harpo Productions (which produces the Oprah Winfrey Show) debuts on the BE 100s list at number 9 in the Industrial/Service category . Read more...

The tennis star Venus Williams signs a five-year, $40-million endorsement deal with Reebok, the largest endorsement deal ever for a woman athlete. Read more...

Robert Johnson, the black entrepreneur, buys the Charlotte Hornets basketball team. Read more...

Barry Bonds, the San Francisco Giants outfielder, wins his fifth National League Most Valuable Player award. Read more...

Clarence Smith severs his thirty-three-year business partnership with Ed Lewis and Essence Communications Partners, the company that publishes Essence magazine. Read more...

The Harlem Globetrotters is inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame as a team. Read more...

Vernice Armour, a first lieutenant in the Marine Corps, is the first African American woman to become a combat helicopter pilot. Read more...

Vonetta Flowers is the first African American women to win a gold medal in any Winter Olympic sport. She is also the first American woman to win a gold medal in the bobsled. Read more...

Laila Ali, the youngest daughter of the heavyweight boxing legend Muhammad Ali, becomes the only woman to unify three professional boxing titles, winning the International Boxing Association (IBA) belt, the Women's International Boxing Association (WIBA) belt, and the International Women's Boxing Federation (IWBF) belt—all in the super middleweight class. Read more...

Carl Horton is named president and CEO of Absolut Spirits Company, a subsidiary of V&S (Vin and Sprit AB) of Stockholm, Sweden.

Federated Department Stores, Inc., which owns Bloomingdale's and Macy's, gives hip hop brands premium space on its store shelves. Bloomingdale's, the nation's first department store to sell Sean John, begins carrying Rocawear in the spring. Macy's also offers the FUBU clothing line for women.

Frank Mercado-Valdes changes the name of African Heritage Networks to Heritage Networks.

I. Owen Funderburg, president and CEO since 1975 of one of the largest black-owned banks, Citizens Trust Bank, dies.

William F. Williams, co-founder and CEO of Glory Foods, dies.

Suzan-Lori Parks wins the Pulitzer Prize for drama for her play Topdog/Underdog. She is the first African American woman to be awarded the prize; the drama treats themes of legacy, identity, and history as experienced by two brothers named Lincoln and Booth. Read more...

The Bondwoman’s Narrative by Hanna Crafts is published 150 years after it is written. The Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. discovers the novel and confirms that it was written before 1860 based on the ink used by the author. The narrative is an autobiographical account of how Crafts escaped to New Jersey from slavery in North Carolina. Read more...

Benedita Souza da Silva becomes first Afro-Brazilian governor of the state of Rio de Janeiro.

Ann Fudge is named chairman and CEO of Young and Rubicam. She is the first African American woman to head a major advertising agency. Read more...

Michael Jordan retires as a player for the Washington Wizards and is fired as president of basketball operations for the team. Read more...

Oprah Winfrey makes Forbes magazine's “billionaires list”; with a reported net worth of $1 billion, she is the first black woman to make the list and is only the second African American billionaire (after BET founder Robert Johnson). Read more...

With support from the United Nations, the United States, and other African countries, opposition groups succeed in removing Charles Taylor from the presidency of Liberia. Read more...

Angel Berroa, a black Latino from the Dominican Republican, is named the American League Rookie of the Year; Dontrelle Willis, the Florida Marlins pitcher, is named the National League Rookie of the Year. Read more...

Barry Bonds, the San Francisco Giants outfielder, wins his sixth National League Most Valuable Player award. Read more...

The Center of Black Business History, Entrepreneurship, and Technology at the University of Texas at Austin, founded by Dr. Juliet E. K. Walter, inducts Sherra Aguirre, Comer Cottrell, George Foreman, and Kase Lawal in the Texas Black Business Hall of Fame. Read more...

Clarence O. Smith, co-founder and president emeritus Essence magazine, launches Avocet Travel, the first nonstop air charter service between the United States and Bahia, Brazil. Read more...

Meadowlark Lemon, a longtime star of Harlem Globetrotters, is elected to the Basketball Hall of Fame. Lemon was known as the “Clown Prince of Basketball” for his humor, tricks, and brilliant play, including the ability to sink a half-court hook shot almost at will. Read more...

Maynard Holbrook Jackson Jr., elected Atlanta's first black mayor in 1973, dies. Black Enterprise magazine argues that by breaking down the largely white “old boy network,” Jackson “created more black millionaires than any other public figure.” Read more...

NAACP President Kweisi Mfume brokers a deal with the Cuban leader Fidel Castro for black farmers to export $15 to $25 million worth of soybeans, corn, rice, and chicken from NBFA Foods, a Virginia-based company that handles all of the produce for the National Black Farmers Association. Read more...

New Urban Entertainment TV (NUE-TV) ceases operations. NUE-TV reached nearly 3 million subscribers before shutting down in October. Read more...

Radio One and Comcast Corporation launch TV One, a cable company. The company says that it will be different than BET because it focuses on an older demographic. Read more...

The mezzo-soprano Denyce Graves is appointed a cultural ambassador for the United States; under the auspices of the State Department, Graves will travel throughout the world on good-will missions. Read more...

Marc Morial, a popular former mayor of New Orleans, becomes head of the National Urban League. Read more...

The Houston-based company, CAMAC Holdings, an integrated oil and gas company, is the second African American business with more than $1 billion in sales.

The National Football League fines the owner of the Detroit Lions $200,000 for failing to interview any blacks when looking for a new head coach for his team. He is fined under the “Rooney Rule,” named for Dan Rooney, the owner of the Pittsburgh Steelers, who had been chair of the NFL's diversity committee.

Rebel groups in the Darfur region of Sudan demand power-sharing from the Arab-controlled government, which responds by attacking civilian populations in rebel areas and encouraging genocide against black Africans in Darfur. Read more...

The "Father of Soul," Ray Charles, dies at age seventy-four. Read more...

Thousands of Sudanese refugees flee to neighboring Chad to avoid attacks by government supported Janjaweed militias; Kofi Annan (secretary general of the UN) and Colin Powell (US secretary of state) travel to Sudan to focus world attention on the dire humanitarian crisis in Darfur. Read more...

Dorothy I. Height receives the Congressional Gold Medal from President George W. Bush. Read more...

Alice A. Huffman serves as chair of the Democratic National Convention Committee. Read more...

Condoleezza Rice is nominated by George W. Bush in second term to replace Colin Powell as U.S. secretary of state. She is confirmed by the Senate in January 2005. Read more...

Russell Simmons, CEO of Rush Communications, sells Phat Fashions, LLC (which includes Phat Farm and Baby Phat) to the Kellwood Company for $140 million. Read more...

The black Latino Vladimir Guerrero, of the Anaheim Angels, wins the American League Most Valuable Player award. Read more...

Barry Bonds, the San Francisco Giants outfielder, wins his seventh National League Most Valuable Player award, more than any other player in history. Read more...

Earvin “Magic” Johnson debuts the MAGICCash Visa debit card, a prepaid debit card, in partnership with Visa USA. Read more...

Major Broadcasting Cable Network, the only wholly black-owned and -operated cable television network, changes its name to the Black Family Channel. Read more...

Lynette Woodard, a college and Olympic basketball star, and professional player in Italy, the United States, and Japan, is elected to the Basketball Hall of Fame. Read more...

Trudie Kibbe Reed becomes the fifth President of Bethune-Cookman College and the first woman to serve in this capacity since the college's founder, Mary McLeod Bethune. Read more...

Zina Garrison, a former tennis star, becomes coach of the United States women's tennis team at the summer Olympics in Athens, Greece. Read more...

Beyoncé Knowles receives the NAACP's Entertainer of the Year award. Read more...

Laila Ali earns the IWBF light heavyweight title. Read more...

Aylwin Lewis is the eighth black CEO of a Fortune 500 corporation. As of 2004, there are six black CEOs of Fortune 500 companies.

Bridgewater Interiors is awarded a contract from Ford Motors that pays $500 million per year.

Carver Federal Savings Bank acquires Federal Savings Bank to form the largest black-owned bank in the country, with assets of $750 million.

The comedian Dave Chapelle sells two million DVDs of his popular Comedy Central cable TV show, Chapelle Show. He grosses over $40 million.

The former star investment banker Nathan A. Chapman, who started the country's first black-controlled, publicly traded financial services firm, is convicted of twenty-three counts of fraud. In 2005, he will be sentenced to seven and a half years in prison and ordered to pay $5 million in restitution.

One of the nation's leading black-owned advertising agencies, the Chisholm-Mingo Group shuts down after twenty-seven years of operation.

United Bank of Philadelphia, an African American commercial bank, and Comcast Corporation, one of the world's largest communications and media and entertainment companies, finalize plans for a $24.5-million credit facility, which United Bank of Philadelphia will syndicate to sixteen other minority-owned banks throughout the country.

Vanguarde Media, the publisher of the magazines Savoy, Heart and Soul, and Honey, ceases operations.

World Wide Technology is the third African American business to surpass the $1-billion sales mark.

Kathleen M. O'Toole becomes the first woman ever named to lead the nation's oldest police department, in Boston.

Margie Eugene-Richard becomes the first African American to win the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize.

Marie Smith becomes president of American Association of Retired Persons (AARP), one of the most powerful and largest nonprofit member organizations in the country and the largest organization for Americans over the age of fifty.

Valerie Jarrett becomes the chairwoman of the Chicago Stock Exchange.

Edward P. Jones wins the Pulitzer Prize for fiction for his novel Known World, the story of a black farmer and former slave who himself becomes a plantation slave-owner.

ZZ Packer is a PEN/Faulkner Award runner-up for Drinking Coffee Elsewhere, a collection of short stories.

Forward Cobi Jones of Major League Soccer's Los Angeles Galaxy made a record-breaking 164th appearance for the U.S. men's national side on 9th October, 2004, in a World Cup qualifier against El Salvador. As of May 2012, Jones remained the most capped American of all time, and was ranked seventh in the world.

San Jose State University erects a statue to Tommie Smith and John Carlos, the activist track stars who raised clenched fists to protest segregation in the United States during the medal ceremony at the 1968 Olympics. Read more...

The U.S. Post Office issues a commemorative stamp for Arthur Ashe, the tennis legend who died of AIDS. Read more...

Kweisi Mfume, the president of the NAACP, steps down. Read more...

The Chicago White Sox outfielder Jermaine Dye is named the World Series Most Valuable Player. Read more...

Ryan Howard, the Philadelphia Phillies first baseman, is named National League Rookie of the Year. Read more...

Civil rights activists mark forty years since “Bloody Sunday,” the day when 600 people, mostly African American, walking from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, to call attention to voters' right, were attacked by state troopers as they tried to cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge. Read more...

John H. Johnson, the publisher of Ebony magazine dies. Read more...

In its annual report, the National Urban League notes that blacks have achieved only 57 percent of the economic status of whites. Read more...

Heritage Networks (led by Frank Mercado-Valdes), which syndicates popular African American TV shows such as the Parkers, Moesha, and the Steve Harvey Show, files bankruptcy. Read more...

The co-founder of BET Sheila Johnson is the first African American woman to own a stake in three professional sports teams, the WNBA's Washington Mystics, the NHL's Washington Capitals, and the NBA's Washington Wizards. Read more...

The tennis star Serena Williams, whose sister signed one of the most lucrative endorsement deals three years previously, signs an eight-year endorsement deal with Nike worth an estimated $55 million. Read more...

The NAACP calls on Maryland lawmakers to rename Baltimore-Washington International Airport in honor of Thurgood Marshall. Read more...

Charles H. (Chuck) James III, the owner of C. H. James, purchases forty-seven Burger King franchises in the greater-Chicago area. He becomes Burger King's largest minority franchisee.

Detroit-based auto supplier Bridgewater Interiors, LLC, wins a $400-million contract from Chrysler Corporation; it is the largest minority contract ever awarded by Chrysler.

Detroit-based Prestige Automotive is the first black-owned auto dealership to achieve more than $1 billion in sales. Prestige is the fourth African American company to achieve this milestone; the other three companies are TLC Beatrice International Holdings, Inc., World Wide Technology, Inc., and CAMAC Holdings, Inc.

Don Thompson is appointed chief operations officer of McDonald's, the first African American to hold the position and the highest-ranking African American executive in the company.

The U.S. Census Bureau issues 2002 business statistics noting that there were 1.2 million black-owned businesses in 2002, up 45 percent from 1997, with receipts of $92.7 billion, up 30 percent from 1997.

The millionaire Reggie Fowler buys principal ownership in the Minnesota Vikings for an estimated $625 million. He is the first African American principal owner of an NFL team.

R. Donahue Peebles sells the Royal Palm Crowne Plaza Resort, a black-owned luxury Miami hotel, for $127 million to the Falor Company, a white-owned, Chicago-based hotel development company.

Radio One acquires Reach Media, the two-year-old parent company of the successful, nationally syndicated Tom Joyner Morning Show and BlackAmericaWeb.com, for $56 million.

Target Market News reports that black households collectively earned an income of $679 billion in 2004.

The Pew Hispanic Center in Washington, D.C., determines that white households have a median net worth of $88,651, Hispanics $7,932, and African Americans only $5,988.

With funding from the Verizon Foundation and the support of the New York City Department of Education and Public Libraries, the National Urban League launches Hip-Hop Reader, a youth literacy and leadership program designed to enhance the reading interest, technology usage, and civic engagement of urban high school students; the program is piloted in New York City.

Edwidge Danticat’s novel Dew Breaker, about a Haitian man and former prison officer who immigrates to the United States, is a PEN/Faulkner Award runner-up. Read more...

Haitian born Michaëlle Jean becomes the first African-descended Governor-General of Canada.

Barack Obama becomes 3rd African American to win the Nobel peace Prize.

Shirley Chisholm, the first African American woman elected to Congress in 1968 and one of the founding members of the Congressional Black Caucus in 1972, dies. Read more...

The attorney Johnnie L. Cochran dies. Read more...

Shani Davis is the first African American to be awarded a gold medal in the winter Olympics when he wins the 1000-meter speed-skating event. Read more...

Ronald A. Williams is appointed CEO of Aetna Insurance, becoming the sixth African American CEO of a Fortune 500 company. The others are Kenneth Chenault, American Express; Richard Parsons, Time Warner; Aylwin Lewis, Sears; E. Stanley O'Neal, Merrill Lynch; Clarence Otis, Darden Restaurants; and Franklin Raines, named CEO of Fannie Mae in 1999 (resigned in 2004).

The playwright August Wilson dies. Two weeks later the Virginia Theater on Broadway in New York City is renamed the August Wilson Theater in his honor. Read more...

Annette Gordon-Reed becomes First African American to win the Pulitzer Prize for History for The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family.

Ron Kirk appointed First African-American United States Trade Representative.

Debut of the first African American Disney Princess, Tiana, voiced by Anika Noni Rose, and set in jazz age New Orleans.

Charles F. Bolden becomes the first African American administrator of NASA.

James Young elected the first African American mayor of Philadelphia, Mississippi, the town notorious for the 1963 murders of civil rights workers James Cheney, Andrew Goodman, and James Schwerer.

Xerox Corporation names Ursula Burns the first black woman CEO of a Fortune 500 company.

Lisa Jackson is confirmed as Chief Administrator of the federal Environmental Protection Agency, becoming the first African American to hold that office. Read more...

Former Maryland Lt. Governor Michael Steele becomes the first African American to win the chairmanship of the Republican National Committee. Read more...

Susan Rice is confirmed as United States Ambassador to the United Nations. She is the first African American woman to hold that position. Read more...

When the U.S. mint presses a special commemorative quarter (part of a fifty-state set) for the District of Columbia, the jazz great Duke Ellington becomes the first African American to be featured alone on a piece of U.S. currency. Read more...

In 2009 the United Nations estimated that the population of the African continent had exceeded 1 billion for the first time

At the IAAF World Track and field Championships in Berlin, Germany, on August 16, 2009, Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt becomes the first athlete to run the 100 meters in under 9.6 seconds. The new time of 9.58 seconds broke Bolt's own World Record, set in the 2008 Beijing Olymnpic by 0.11 seconds.

An estimated 1 billion peopleworldwide watch the televised funeral service for pop star Michael Jackson, who died aged 50 on June 25, 2009.

A study by the Center for Responsible Lending found that blacks and Latinos were more than 70 percent more likely than whites to lose their homes to foreclosure during the housing and mortgage crisis of 2007-2009. This was because, compared to whites, minority borrowers received higher rates on subprime loans, resulting in higher monthly payments and quicker defaults.

U.S. House of Representatives votes 333–79 to censure Congressman Charles B. Rangel for an "accumulation of actions" inlcuding property tax evasion, failure to declare financial assets, and inappropriate use of his office to solicit funds for the Charles B Rangel Center at the City University of New York.

Tim Scott (South Carolina) and Allen West (Florida) are the first African American Republicans since the 19th century to be elected to Congress from a state in the former Confederacy.

Marta of FC Gold Pride of the US Women's Professional Soccer League wins her 5th successive FIFA World Female Player of the Year Award.

Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali was forced to step down after 24 years as president of Tunisia, following mass protests against high unemployment, police brutality, and political corruption in the one party state.

On September 25, 2011 Kenyan Patrick Makau Musyoki sets a world record, completing the Berlin, Germany, Marathon in 2 hours, 3 minutes, and 38 seconds.

Three African Americans, Cobi Jones, Eddie Pope, and Earnie Stewart, are inducted into the National Soccer Hall of Fame.

Along with Tawakel Karman of Yemen, President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and Leymah Gbowee of Liberia win the Nobel Peace Prize for for their "non-violent struggle for the safety of women and for women’s rights to full participation in peace-building work."

After briefly leading opinion polls in the race for the 2012 Republican Party presidential nomination, businessman Herman Cain suspended his campaign amidst allegations of sexual harassment.

Baseball star Barry Bonds was found guilty of obstructing justice by impeding a grand jury investigation into illegal steroid distribution. He was sentenced to 30 days of house arrest, 2 years of probation, 250 hours of community service, and fined $4,000.

Johnny DuPree, mayor of Hattiesburg, Mississippi, wins the Democratic Party gubernatorial nomination, becoming the first African American at the top of a statewide ticket in Mississippi since Reconstruction. DuPree loses the general election to Phil Bryant, a white Republican.

President Barack Obama dedicates the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial on October 16, 2011. the first African-American honored with a memorial on the National Mall in Washington, DC. Poet Maya Angelou, among others, criticized an inscription on the memorial, "I was a drum major for justice, peace and righteousness," as a misleading paraphrase of King's words, which made him appear egotistical. The Department of the Interior later promised to alter the text.

Actor, director, and producer Tyler Perry is named by Forbes magazine as the highest paid man in the entertainment industry. He earned $130 million between May 2010 and 2011.

On April 15, 1997, Major League Baseball retires the number 42 for all MLB teams in honor of Jackie Robinson.

Muammar Gaddafi's 42 year year reign as Libyan Head of State ends on October 20, 2011, when he is captured and killed by forces loyal to Libya's National Transition Council.

Under the leadership of Mayor Cory Booker Newark, New Jersey, experiences its first murder-free month since 1966. Between 2006 and 2010, Booker's success in reducing violent crime, while improving access to affordable housing aids his re-election as Mayor in November 2010.

In June 2012 former Egyptian Head of State, Hosni Mubarak is sentenced to life imprisonment for complicty in the deaths of protestors in early 2011. Thousands in Cairo demonstrated against his aquittal on other charges and the acquittal of many of Mubarak's high ranking government colleagues.

United Nations Security Council Resolution 1973 authorized US, French, and British military intervention in support of the Libyan resistance againts Muamamar Qadaffi. The military action ended in October 2011, following the killing of Qadaffi and the emergence of a new National Transitional Council government.

Across the United States thousands rally to condemn the February 26, 2012 killing of unarmed teenager Trayvon Martin by George Zimmerman, a neighborhood watch coordinator in Sanford, Florida. The police initially released Zimmerman without charging him, but the protests forced Florida authorities to charge him with second degree murder on April 11, 2012, six weeks after the killing.

Upon the death of Bingu wa Mutharika on 5th April, 2012, Vice president Joyce Banda succeeds to the Presidency of Malawi. She is Malawi's first and Africa's second female head of state, after Ellen Sirleaf Johnson of Liberia.

The NAACP National Board endorsed same-sex marriage as a civil right in May 2012, two weeks after President Barack Obama announced his own support of marriage rights for gays and lesbians. Several state referenda on gay marriage had found African Americans somewhat more opposed to gay marriage than other ethnic groups.

On May 23, 2012 Egyptians turned out to vote in the first free and direct presdiential elections in that country

The U.S. Census Bureau estimates that between July 2010 and July 2011 a majority of children born in America belonged to ethnic or racial minorities. This was the first time since in Census history that whites constituted a minority of births.

Barack Obama becomes the first African American elected President of the United States when he defeats his Republican opponent, Arizona senator John McCain. Obama's victory extends into states once thought sure things for the Republicans, such as Indiana, Virginia, and North Carolina. Read more...

Barack Obama is sworn in as the first African American president of the United States before a crowd estimated at nearly two million. Read more...

The U.S. Justice Department officially closes the Emmett Till murder case. No evidence of a wider conspiracy in the 1955 slaying is uncovered. Read more...

Tony Dungy becomes the first African American head coach to lead an NFL franchise to a Super Bowl championship when his Indianapolis Colts defeat the Chicago Bears in Super Bowl XLI. Read more...

Barack Obama becomes the first African American to win the presidential nomination of a major national political party. He does so by winning more delegates than his remaining Democratic rival, former First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton. Read more...

Deval Patrick is sworn in as the governor of Massachusetts. Patrick, formerly head of the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Justice Department during the Clinton Administration, is only the second African American elected governor. Read more...

Lovie Smith becomes the first African American head coach to lead a National Football League squad to the Super Bowl when his Chicago Bears rout the New Orleans Saints in the NFC championship game. Just hours later, the Indianapolis Colts' Tony Dungy would become the second African American head coach to reach the NFL's summit. Read more...

A copy of the first and only issue of All-Negro Comics (1947), often billed as the first comic book written and drawn for a black readership, is put up for auction by ComicConnect. Read more...

Rallies in support of the so-called Jena Six are held in Jena, LA and around the country. The six black teenagers came to the attention of a broader public following their arrest for the aggravated battery of a white youth, Justin Barker. Supporters of the Six contend that their treatment at the hands of the criminal justice system was racially motivated. Read more...

When New York governor Eliot Spitzer resigns following a scandal, Lt. Governor David Paterson becomes the first African American governor of New York. Read more...

The U.S. Census Bureau estimates the number of African Americans in the United States is approximately 40.7 million, or 13.5 percent of the population. Read more...

Residents of Colorado and Nebraska vote on statewide measures to ban affirmative action (including scholarships directed at minority students). The Nebraska initiative, Initiative 424, passes, though its legal status remains uncertain. Read more...

The mountain climber Sophia Danenberg reaches the summit of Mount Everest. She is the first African American and the first African American woman to do so. Read more...

Eric Holder becomes the first African American to be named Attorney General of the United States. Read more...

Barrington Irving becomes the first African American to fly around the world in an airplane.

A divided U.S Supreme Court holds in the cases of Parents v. Seattle and Meredith v. Jefferson County Board of Education that public school districts may not attempt to create racial balance through the assignment of minority students. The decisions are widely viewed as a blow to the legacy of Brown v. Board of Education.

Egypt holds its first ever democratic direct presidential election. International observers, including former US president Jimmy Carter declared the first round of voting to have been conducted legally and fairly. On a turnout of 46 percent, the two leading candidates, Mohammed Morsey of the Muslim Brotherhood-linked Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) and Ahmed Shafik, a former prime minister and ally of Hosni Mubarak, advanced to a runoff to be held in June 2012.

Protests, which begun in Tunisia in December 2010 heralded the "Arab Spring" of 2011 in which hundreds of thousands of people demonstrated against one party states and political corruption in North Africa and the Middle East. By Marcht 2011, the presidents of Tunisia and Egypt had been ousted. A NATO supported resistance movement in Libya ultimately ended Muamar Qadaffi's 42 years as leader in August 2011