(Photo By Flickr User Sougata Ghosh)
Black History Today for February 6th:
1993: Tennis player Arthur Ashe dies. Ashe was the first African American to win at Wimbledon.
1961: Jail-in movement started in Rock Hill, SC; when students refused to pay fines and requested jail sentences. Students Nonviolent Coordinating Committee urged south-wide "Jail, No Bail" campaign.
1945: Nesta Robert "Bob" Marley was born in Nine Mile, Saint Ann, Jamaica on this day.
1933: Walter Edward Fauntroy was born in Washington, D.C. He went on to become a District of Columbia delegate to the House of Representatives.
1898: Melvin Beaunorus Tolson, author, educator, poet, born in Moberly, MO.
1870: Jonathan Jasper Wright was elected to the South Carolina Supreme Court, on this day.
1867: The Peabody Fund for Black education in the South established.
1820: The first organized emigration back to Africa begins when 86 free African Americans leave New York Harbor aboard the Mayflower of Liberia. They are bound for the British colony of Sierra Leone, which welcomes free African Americans as well as fugitive slave. Also, the United States population: 9,638,453. Black population: 1,771,656 (18.4%). "Mayflower of Liberia" sailed from New York City with eighty-six Blacks. Ship arrived in Sierra Leone, March 9.
