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Special Features: This Week in Black History
Friday, March 11, 2005; Page 7
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.
March 10 - Hallie Quinn Brown, writer, educator and women’s rights activist, born this day in 1854. She served as a principal of Tuskegee Institute from 1892-93 under Booker T. Washington. In 1893 Brown was a principal promoter of the organization of the Colored Woman's League of Washington, D.C., which the next year joined other groups to form the National Association of Colored Women. She served as president of the Ohio State Federation of Colored Women's Clubs from 1905-12 and the National Association of Colored Women from 1920-24. During the 1920’s she also helped begin a campaign to preserve the home of Frederick Douglass.
March 11 - Lorraine Hansberry’s acclaimed play, A Raisin in the Sun, opens at the Barrymore Theatre in New York, 1959. It was the first play written by a Black woman to be produced on Broadway. Hansberry was the youngest and the first Black writer to receive the New York Drama Critics Circle Award.
March 12 - Benjamin Banneker, along with Charles L'Enfant, is commissioned to lay out the District of Columbia, 1791. He was the son of a freed mother and a slave father. While growing up, he showed a keen interest in building mechanical devices, eventually building the first wooden clock in America. Banneker developed a reputation in the fields of astronomy, geology, physics, and mathematics. He also published seven annual almanacs during his lifetime.
March 13 - Activist Fannie Lou Hamer dies this day in 1977. She became involved in voter registration and in the Civil Rights Movement when members of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) came to Mississippi during the 1960s. After being deterred initially from being able to register by Jim Crow laws, she would finally become registered to vote in 1963, after three attempts. Hamer would become a field secretary for SNCC, remaining active throughout her life in grassroots organization.
March 14 - African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church is founded in 1821. The African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church (AMEZ) church emerged out of the Methodist Episcopal Church (MEC) in response to racism against African Americans in the church. Thirty Black members, led by James Varick, would hold separate meetings at the church from 1796-1801, when they built their first church. They were led by the White minister of the John Street Church until 1820, when they officially voted to leave the MEC and published their own Book of Discipline. In 1822, James Varick was elected as the first superintendent. The church became known as the “freedom church” for its strong dissent against slavery.
March 15 - John Lee, first Black commissioned officer in the U.S. Navy, is assigned, 1947.
March 16 - John Russwurm and Samuel Cornish founded Freedom's Journal, the first Black newspaper, 1827. The paper, which was established in New York City, served to counter racist commentary published in the mainstream news. Cornish and Russwurm served, respectively, as its senior and junior editors. Initially opposed to colonization efforts, Freedom's Journal denounced slavery and advocated for black’s political rights, including the right to vote, and spoke out against lynchings.
Week 1 | Week 2 | Week 3 | Week 4 | Week 5 | Week 6 | Week 7 | Week 8 | Week 9 | Week 10
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