(Photo By Flickr User Karen)
Black History Today for February 23rd:
1995: Bass Singer Melvin Franklin of The Temptations, died of complications following a brain seizure in Los Angeles, CA. He was 53.
1979: Frank E. Peterson Jr., named the first Black general in the Marine Corps.
1965: Constance Baker Motley elected Manhattan Borough president, the highest elective office held by a Black woman in a major American city.
1929: Baseball catcher Elston Gene Howard was born in St. Louis, MO. In 1965, Howard signed a $70,000 contract with the New York Yankees and became the highest paid player in the history of baseball at the time.
1925: Louis Stokes, former mayor of Detroit, MI, and member of the US House of Representatives, was born in Cleveland, OH. Stokes was the first African-American elected to the House from Ohio.
1915: Death of Robert Smalls (75), Reconstruction congressman, in Beaufort, SC.
1895: William H. Heard, AME minister and educator, named minister to Liberia.
1869: Louisiana governor signed public accommodations law on this day.
1868: William Edward Burghardt Du Bois (W.E.B. Du Bois) was born in Great Barrington, MA on this day.
