Source: blackfacts.com
1990 – The Piano Lesson, a play by August Wilson, wins the Pulitzer Prize for Drama.
1984 – Desmond Tutu was elected as the first Black Bishop of Johannesburg, South Africa.
1980 – Around 1,000 people from 25 states gathered in Philadelphia, PA, and formed the National Black Independent Party.
1907 – Alice Freeman Palmer Institute in Sedalia, North Carolina, founded by Charlotte Hawkins Brown, was renamed and incorporated as Palmer Memorial Institute. Henry Watson Furness last black minister of Haiti
1905 – Henry Watson Furness, an Indiana physician, named minister of Haiti. He was the last Black minister to Haiti in this period. Woodrow Wilson appointed a white minister in 1913.
1905 – Fifty-seven Blacks reported lynched.
1897 – J. L. Love, inventor, patented the Pencil Sharpener. Patent # 594,114.
1897 – On this day Andrew J. Beard, and African American inventor was awarded Patent # 594,059. Despite having no formal education in engineering or metalwork, Beard had invented an automtic railroad car coupling device called the Jenny Coupler. Prior to the Jenny Coupler train cars were joined together manually, causing thousands of railroad workers to lose their hands,arms, and even their lives. Born in Eastlake, Alabama, in 1850, Beard labored for years in railroad yards where he personally witnessed horrific accidents when workers tried to execute the rapid procedure of manually coupling train cars with a pin. Beard sold his lifesaving invention to a New York company for $50,000. Patent # 594,059.
1867 – Louisiana constitutional convention (forty-nine white delegates and forty-nine Black delegates) met in Mechanics Institute, New Orleans.
