Today in Black History

1886 - W.E.B. DuBois, scholar, activist, author, and noted for his groundbreaking book, "The Souls of Black Folk," is born in Great Barrington, Mass.

1925 - Louis Stokes, the first Black member of Congress from Ohio, is born in Cleveland, OH

1956 - Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. states at a mass meeting at Dexter Ave Baptist Church that "...We must realize so many people are taught to hate us that they are not totally responsible for their hate..."

On this date in 1979, the first African-American man was promoted to the rank of brigadier general in the U.S. Marine Corps.

Lt. General Frank E. Peterson, from Topeka, Kansas received the honor in Quantico, Virginia. Peterson spent 38 years in the Corp; he also holds bachelors and masters degrees from George Washington University. He retired from the Corp in 1988.


Claude Brown was born on this date in 1937. He was an African-American writer and children’s advocate


Agnes Smedley was born on this date in 1892. She was an American activist and social radical. The daughter of a laborer she was born in Osgood, Missouri.

Feb. 23, 1869 - Louisiana governor signed public accommodations law.

Feb. 23, 1895 - William H. Heard, AME minister and educator, named minister to Liberia.

Feb. 23, 1965 - Constance Baker Motley elected Manhattan Borough president, the highest elective office held by a black woman in a major American city.

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Introduction
William Edward Burghardt DuBois, to his admirers, was by spirited devotion and scholarly dedication, an attacker of injustice and a defender of freedom.

A harbinger of Black nationalism and Pan-Africanism, he died in self-imposed exile in his home away from home with his ancestors of a glorious past—Africa.

Labeled as a "radical," he was ignored by those who hoped that his massive contributions would be buried along side of him. But, as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote, "history cannot ignore W.E.B. DuBois because history has to reflect truth and Dr. DuBois was a tireless explorer and a gifted discoverer of social truths. His singular greatness lay in his quest for truth about his own people. There were very few scholars who concerned themselves with honest study of the black man and he sought to fill this immense void. The degree to which he succeeded disclosed the great dimensions of the man."

W.E.B. Dubois
Sociologist, Author & Civil Rights Leader 1868 -1963

Children learn more from what you are than what you teach.
—WEB Dubois, 1897




The Souls of Black Folk - Author: W.E.B. Dubois
Penned by Dubois in 1903, "The Souls of Black Folk" remains his most studied and popular work. The book's largely autobiographical chapters take the reader through the momentous and moody maze of Afro-American life after the Emancipation Proclamation: from poverty, the neoslavery of the sharecropper, to the heights of humanity reached by the spiritual "sorrow songs" that birthed gospel and the blues.