(Jimi Hendrix)
September 18
1850- As part of the Compromise of 1850, U.S. Congress passed the Fugitive Slave Law. It required that all escaped slaves were, upon capture, to be returned to their masters and that officials and citizens of free states had to cooperate in the law.
1919- Fritz Pollard became the first African American to play professional football for a major team, the Akron Indians. Pollard was also the first African American to play in the Rose Bowl.
1970- Rock legend Jimi Hendrix died in London from asphyxia. The Rock legend is known for his hits “Purple Haze” and “Hey Joe.”
September 19
1881- Booker T. Washington opened the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama.
1981- More than 300,000 demonstrators from labor and civil rights organizations protested the social policies of the Reagan administration in Solidarity Day march in Washington, D.C.
1992- Gordon Parks’ film “The Learning Tree” was registered in the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress. It joined other films such as “Casablanca”, “Gone with the Wind” and “The Wizard of Oz”.
September 20
1664- Maryland enacted first anti-amalgamation law to prevent widespread intermarriage of English women and Black men. Other colonies passed similar laws: Virginia, 1691; Massachusetts, 1705; North Carolina, 1715; South Carolina, 1717; Delaware, 1721; Pennsylvania, 1725.
1958- Martin Luther King, Jr., was stabbed in the chest by an African American woman while he autographed books in a Harlem department store. The woman was later place under mental observation.
1987- Alfre Woodard won an Emmy for outstanding guest performance in the dramatic series “L.A. Law.” It was her second Emmy award, her first having been for supporting role in “Hill Street Blues” in 1984.
September 21
1872- John Henry Conyers of South Carolina became the first African American student at Annapolis Naval Academy. He later resigned.
1961- Southern Regional Council announced that a Sit-in movement had effected twenty states and more than one hundred cities in southern and border states in period from February, 1960, to September, 1961.
September 22
1960- Mali proclaimed as independent.
1998- USA Sprinter and winner of 3 gold and silver medalists Florence “Flo-Jo” Griffith-Joyner died at 38.
(Florence “Flo-Jo” Griffith-Joyner)
September 23
1926- Innovative and famed jazz musician John Coltrane was born.
1961- President Kennedy named Thurgood Marshall to U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
1979- Lou Brock stole the record of 935th bases and became the all-time major league record holder.
September 24
1957- Nine African American students started school in Little Rock high school. Their enrollment was followed by the Little Rock Crisis, in which Orval Faubus, the Governor of Arkansas, initially prevented the students from entering the racially segregated school. They then attended after the intervention of President Dwight D. Eisenhower. Soldiers of 101st Airborne Division escorted the nine to Little Rock Central High School.
1962- U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ordered Board of Higher Education of Mississippi to admit James Meredith to the University of Mississippi, a then segregated school, or be held in contempt. Meredith was the first African American to be accepted in to the university. His goal was to put pressure on the Kennedy administration to enforce civil rights for African Americans.
