(Photo By Flickr User mattlemmon)

Today in Black History for February 4th:

1996 – Julius Caesar (J.C.) Watts, Jr. becomes the first Black selected to respond to a State Of The Union.

1986- A stamp of Sojourner Truth is issued by the U.S. Postal Service.

1971- National Guard mobilized to quell rioting in Wilmington, NC; Two persons killed. 

1969 – MPLA begins armed struggle in Angola

1952- Jackie Robinson became the first African-American executive of a major TV Station after accepting the position of Director of Communications for NBC on this day.

1944- Actress, humanitarian, and Grammy Award-winning singer Florence LaRue of The 5th Dimension was born on this day in Plainfield, NJ. 

1913- “The Mother of the Modern-Day Civil Rights Movement”, Rosa Parks (Rosa Louise McCauley), was born on this day in Tuskegee, AL. She was the 1st African-American woman to trigger the largest and most successful mass movement against racial segregation in all of history when she refused to give up her bus seat for a white man in 1955. She passed away in October 2005.

1794- France abolishes slavery. The nation will have a lukewarm commitment to abolition and will, under Napoleon, reestablish slavery in 1802 along with the reinstitution of the "Code Noir", prohibiting blacks, mulattoes, and other people of color from entering French colonial territory or intermarrying with whites.