October 2017

JAN FEB MAR APR MAY JUN JUL AUG SEP OCT NOV DEC

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Oct 1 The 24th Infantry Regiment (the deuce four), the last all-Black military unit, was deactivated in Korea, 1951.
Oct 2 Thurgood Marshall was sworn in as the first African American Justice of the Supreme Court, 1967.
Oct 3 Nat King Cole becomes first African American to host his own TV show, 1956.
Oct 4 Geoffrey S. Fletcher, first African American to receive an Academy Award for writing “Precious…” was born in New London, CT, 1970.
Oct 5 Autherine Juanita Lucy, the first African American student to attend the University of Alabama, was born in Shiloh, Alabama, 1929.
Oct 6 Fannie Lou Townsend Hamer, voting rights activist and civil rights leader, was born in Sunflower County, Mississippi, 1917.
Oct 7 Toni Morrison became the first African American woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, 1993.
Oct 8 Jesse Louis Jackson, Sr., clergyman and civil rights leader, was born Jesse Louis Burns in Greenville, South Carolina, 1941.
Oct 9 Eugene Jacques Bullard, the only African American pilot in World War I, was born in Columbus, Georgia, 1894.
Oct 10 Frederick Douglass Patterson, educator and founder of the United Negro College Fund, was born in Washington, D. C., 1901.
Oct 11 Granville T. Woods patents telephone system and apparatus, patent number 371,241., 1887.
Oct 12 Wilton Norman “Wilt” Chamberlain, only player in NBA history to score 100 points in a game and average 50 points per game in a season, died, 1999.
Oct 13 Shirley Ann Caesar, hall of fame gospel singer and songwriter known as “First Lady of Gospel,” was born in Durham, North Carolina, 1938.
Oct 14 At age 35, Martin Luther King, Jr. becomes youngest man ever to win Nobel Peace Prize, 1964.
Oct 15 The AL Penny Savings Bank was founded in Birmingham, AL. One of the first 3 African American owned and operated U.S. financial institutions, 1890.
Oct 16 Million Man March held in Washington, D.C., 1995.
Oct 17 Mae Carol Jemison, hall of fame astronaut, physician and the first African American woman in space, was born in Decatur, Alabama, 1956.
Oct 18 Terry McMillan, author, was born in Port Huron, Michigan, 1951.
Oct 19 Richard Arrington, Jr., the first African American Mayor of Birmingham, Alabama, was born in Livingston, Alabama, 1934.
Oct 20 Fayard Antonio Nicholas, half of the hall of fame Nicholas Brothers dance team, was born in Mobile, Alabama, 1914.
Oct 21 Valerie Thomas received patent number 4,229,761 for her invention of the Illusion Transmitter, 1980.
Oct 22 The Supremes become the first all-female music group to attain a No. 1 selling album (The Supremes A’ Go-Go), 1966.
Oct 23 William A. Leidesdorff, one of the first Black settlers in CA, often called the first Black millionaire, was born in St. Croix, Virgin Islands, 1810.
Oct 24 Marjorie S. Joyner, inventor of the permanent wave machine, patent number 1,693,515, was born in Monterey, VA, 1896.
Oct 25 Emmett W. Chappelle, hall of fame scientist and researcher, was born in Phoenix, Arizona, 1925.
Oct 26 Regina Marcia Benjamin, former Surgeon General of the United States, was born in Mobile, Alabama, 1956.
Oct 27 Benjamin O. Davis, Jr. becomes first African American general in U.S. Air Force, 1954.
Oct 28 Leonard Randolph “Lenny” Wilkens, hall of fame basketball player and coach, was born in Brooklyn, New York, 1937.
Oct 29 Martha Minerva Franklin, hall of fame nurse and founder of the National Association of Colored Graduate Nurses, was born in New Milford, CT, 1870.
Oct 30 Richard Arrington elected first African American mayor of Birmingham, Alabama, 1979.
Oct 31 Ethel Waters, hall of fame gospel, blues and jazz vocalist and actress, was born in Chester, Pennsylvania, 1896.
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