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Special Features: This Week in Black History
Friday, May 6, 2005; Page 10
Week 1 | Week 2 | Week 3 | Week 4 | Week 5 | Week 6 | Week 7 | Week 8 | Week 9 | Week 10
The Washington Informer is launching “This Week in Black History” to serve as a daily remembrance of how far we have come as well as how far we have to go. In the spirit of understanding and progress, we remember.
May 5
Preacher/activist Adam Clayton Powell, Sr. born, 1865. For 29 years, Powell led Abyssinian Baptist Church, which at its height had 14,000 members, one of the largest Protestant congregations in America. During the Depression, he campaigned to feed the poor, better employment and improve city services. Powell eventually turned over the pulpit to his son, Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. who in 1945 became New York's first Black congressman. Abyssinian remains one of Harlem's most significant institutions.
May 6
First Black Masonic Lodge founded Prince Hall, Boston, 1787. Hall, the founder, a Grand Master was associated with our first Grand Lodge and its expansion. His name is carried by masonic organizations in the United States, and by thousands of freemasons who regard themselves as descendants from the Grand Lodge of England, from which he received his authority.
May 7
JR Winters patents the fire escape, 1878.
May 8
Henry McNeal Turner, first Black chaplain in the U.S. Army, dies, 1915. Turner, orator, activist, and advocate for African colonization (a return of African Americans to Africa). He was very active in Georgia state politics, serving briefly in the Georgia State Legislature. He became the twelfth A.M.E. Bishop in 1880. Also, for twelve years he served as chancellor of Morris Brown College in Atlanta, Georgia.
May 9
Slaves in Georgia, Florida and South Carolina are freed, 1862. Freedmen was the term given to those slaves who became free men after the U.S. Congress passed the Confiscation Act of 1862. Under this act, Confederates who did not surrender within 60 days of the act's passage were to be punished by having their slaves freed. Some freed the slaves while others sent them back to their master for lack of means to care for them. The Confiscation Act declared that all slaves taking refuge behind Union lines captives of war were to be set free. The Act essentially paved the way for the Emancipation Proclamation and solved the immediate dilemma facing the army concerning the status of slaves within its jurisdiction.
May 10
Smith vs. Allwright, ruling that excluding Blacks from primary voting is illegal, is decided, 1944. The “white primary” was originally established by internal political party rules and later by state law, in Texas. The basic idea was to overtly prohibit non-whites from being members of or participating in the primary elections of the Democratic Party, which meant prohibiting any electoral choice thereafter, since the Democratic Party ruled the South during this era.
May 11
Nelson Mandela is inaugurated as the first President of South Africa, 1994. In 1964, as a member of the African National Congress (ANC), Mandela, along with eight others, was charged with plotting to overthrow the South African government and sentenced to life imprisonment. He would spend 26 years behind bars, all the while becoming widely accepted as the most important Black leader in South Africa: a compelling symbol of resistance as the anti-apartheid movement. Mandela received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993.
Week 1 | Week 2 | Week 3 | Week 4 | Week 5 | Week 6 | Week 7 | Week 8 | Week 9 | Week 10
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