| Aug 1 |
Michael Duane Johnson became the first man to win Gold medals in the 200 and 400 meter races at the same Olympic Games, 1996. |
| Aug 2 |
James Arthur Baldwin, novelist, playwright, poet, essayist, and civil rights activist, was born in Harlem, New York, 1924. |
| Aug 3 |
Frank Godden instrumental in the growth of the Santa Clarita Valley’s Val Verde, known as “the black Palm Springs,” died, 2012. |
| Aug 4 |
Barack Hussein Obama II, the first African American President of the United States, was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, 1961. |
| Aug 5 |
Shirley Jackson, first female and African American president of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, was born in Washington, D. C., 1946. |
| Aug 6 |
President Lyndon B. Johnson signed into law the National Voting Rights Act, guaranteeing African Americans the right to vote, 1965. |
| Aug 7 |
Ralph Johnson Bunche, Nobel Peace Prize winner, political scientist and diplomat, was born in Detroit, Michigan, 1904. |
| Aug 8 |
William Augustus Hinton, bacteriologist, pathologist, educator, and first African American to publish a medical textbook, died, 1959. |
| Aug 9 |
Jesse Owens wins fourth gold medal at Summer Olympics in Berlin, 1936. |
| Aug 10 |
General Colin Powell is nominated chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff, the first African American to hold the post, 1989. |
| Aug 11 |
Alex Haley, author of “Roots” and “The Autobiography of Malcom X”, was born in Ithaca, New York, 1921. |
| Aug 12 |
Emma Ophelia DeVore, the first prominent African American model in the United States, was born in Edgefield, South Carolina, 1922. |
| Aug 13 |
The Brownsville Raid of 1906, “Brownsville Affair,” resulted in the largest U.S. Army dismissal, 167 African American soldiers, 1906. |
| Aug 14 |
Maria Halle Berry, first African American to win an Academy Award for Best Actress, was born in Cleveland, Ohio, 1966. |
| Aug 15 |
Monroe Nathan Work, sociologist and bibliographer, and publisher of the “Negro Year Book”, was born in Iredell County, North Carolina, 1866. |
| Aug 16 |
Carol Elizabeth Moseley Braun, the first African American woman elected to the United States Senate, was born in Chicago, Illinois, 1947. |
| Aug 17 |
Marcus Mosiah Garvey, Jr., publisher, entrepreneur, orator and Black Nationalist, was born in St. Ann’s Bay, Jamaica, 1887. |
| Aug 18 |
James H. Meredith became the first African American to graduate from the University of Mississippi, 1963. |
| Aug 19 |
Benjamin Banneker, wrote a letter to then U.S. Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson pointing out the hypocrisy of slavery, 1791. |
| Aug 20 |
The first 20 Africans were brought to what would become Jamestown, Virginia aboard a Dutch ship, 1619. |
| Aug 21 |
George Franklin Grant, pioneering dentist and inventor of the golf tee, patent number 638,920, died, 1910. |
| Aug 22 |
The Haitian Revolution began when slaves in Saint Domingue (Haiti) rose in revolt and plunged the colony into a 12 year war, 1791. |
| Aug 23 |
The National Negro Business League was founded in Boston, Massachusetts with Booker T. Washington as its first president, 1900. |
| Aug 24 |
Bayard Rustin, civil rights leader and the chief organizer of the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, died, 1987. |
| Aug 25 |
Althea Gibson, first African American to win the French, Wimbledon, and U. S. Open singles titles, was born in Silver, South Carolina, 1927. |
| Aug 26 |
19th Amendment to the Constitution ratified, giving women the right to vote, 1920. |
| Aug 27 |
William Edward Burghardt Du Bois, civil rights activist, historian and author, died, 1963. |
| Aug 28 |
March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom and Dr. King delivers his “I have a dream” speech, 1963. |
| Aug 29 |
Michael Joseph Jackson, hall of fame singer and the “King of Pop,” was born in Gary, Indiana, 1958. |
| Aug 30 |
Guion Stewart Bluford Jr. becomes the first African American to travel in space aboard the space shuttle Challenger, 1983. |
| Aug 31 |
Marva Collins, educator and author, was born in Monroeville, Alabama, 1936. |
