(Photo By Flickr User Franklin & Marshall College)
Black History Today for February 26th:
1869- Fifteenth Amendment guaranteeing the right to vote sent to the states for ratification.
1870- Black leader of the Union League, Wyatt Outlaw, lynched in Alamance County, NC.
1877- At a conference in the Wormley Hotel in Washington, representatives of Rutherford B. Hayes and representatives of the South negotiated agreement which paved the way for the election of Hayes as president and the withdrawal of federal troops from the South.
1884- Birthday of Congressman James E. O’Hara of North Carolina. First elected March 4, 1833, O’Hara served two terms, the second ending March 3, 1887.
1920- Dr. Carter Godwin Woodson (1875-1950) founded “Associated Publishers” on this day. In February 1926, he announced the institution of Negro History Week, which coincided with the birthdays of Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass. In 1976, the observance was expanded to “National Afro-American History Month,” in honor of the nation’s bicentennial. Beginning in 1975, U.S. Presidents have paid tribute to the mission of the association and urged all Americans to celebrate Afro-American History Month.
1926- Theodore “Georgia Deacon” Flowers wins middleweight boxing title.
1928- Singer Antoine “Fats” Domino, Jr. is born.
1933- Godfrey Cambridge (Cotton Comes To Harlem, The Watermelon Man), actor and comedian born in New York City, NY.
1946- Race riot, Columbia, TN. Two killed and ten wounded.
1964- On this day, the Kentucky boxer known to all as Cassius Clay, changed his name to Muhammad Ali as he accepted Islam and rejected Christianity. “I believe in the religion of Islam. I believe in Allah and in peace; I’m not a Christian anymore.”
1965- Jimmie Lee Jackson, civil rights activist, died of injuries reportedly inflicted by officers in Marion, AL.
1966- Andrew Brimmer becomes the first African-American governor of the Federal Reserve Board when he is appointed by President Lyndon B. Johnson
(Information courtesy of blackfacts.com)
