Black Westchester feels that celebrating Black History year-round is crucial because it’s not just about acknowledging a specific month, but about ensuring Black history and the contributions of Black people are integrated into the broader narrative and curriculum, fostering a more inclusive and equitable society. We feel our year-round celebration provides opportunities to learn about the rich and diverse history of Black people, their struggles, triumphs, and contributions, fostering understanding and empathy. By celebrating Black history, we can challenge harmful stereotypes and biases, promoting a more inclusive and just society. Recognizing the achievements and resilience of Black people can empower individuals and inspire future generations to strive for excellence and social justice. Black History Month is a good time to start, but it’s important to continue learning and celebrating Black history throughout the year, not just in February. So with that said here is Black Westchester’s This Week In Black History!
March 23
1875—The Tennessee legislature approved House Bill 527, which permitted hotels, inns, public transportation, and amusement parks to refuse admission and service to any person for any reason. Three weeks before, federal authorities had enacted the Civil Rights Act of 1875, which guaranteed African Americans equal treatment in public accommodations and jury service. By enacting a state law that allowed for all kinds of discrimination, including on the basis of race, Tennessee officials had defiantly authorized the very discrimination the federal law prohibited.
1916—Marcus Garvey arrives in the United States from Jamaica. He would go on to build the largest Black nationalist and self-help organization in world history—the Universal Negro Improvement Association. The UNIA owned everything from bakeries to a shipping line. It would develop chapters throughout major cities in the U.S., Europe, Africa, and the Caribbean. “Garveyism” emphasized racial pride, economic empowerment, Blacks doing for themselves, and the establishment of a powerful Black nation in Africa to give protection to Blacks throughout the world.
1938—Atlanta’s first Black mayor, Maynard Jackson was born in Dallas, Texas, and later became the first African-American mayor of Atlanta. His family moved to Atlanta in 1945 when his father accepted a job as pastor of the Friendship Baptist Church.
1942—Scholar and political activist Walter Rodney is born in Georgetown, Guyana. Rodney would become one of the leading intellectual forces behind the worldwide Black Nationalist and Pan-Africanist movements of the 1960s and ‘70s. He was a brilliant scholar who traveled widely and among his major writings was the book “How Europe Underdeveloped Africa.” He died in a car bombing in Guyana in 1980.
1953—Singer Chaka Khan, whose birth name is Yvette Marie Stevens, was born in Chicago, Illinois. She is a renowned singer and was involved in the civil rights movement and the Black Panther Party in the late 1960s.
March 24
1837—Blacks in Canada are granted the right to vote. Most of these Blacks had escaped from slavery in America.
1967—Debi Thomas, the first African American to win a medal at the Winter Olympics which she did as a figure skater in 1988.
2002—Halle Berry becomes the first Black woman to win an Oscar for Best Actress. She won for her role in the movie “Monster’s Ball.” She won a Golden Globe for Best Actress in a TV Movie/Mini-Series for “Introducing Dorothy Dandridge” in 1999. Berry was born on Aug. 14, 1966, in Cleveland, Ohio, to an African-American father and a Caucasian mother.
March 25
1807—The Slave Trade Act becomes law, abolishing the slave trade in the British Empire.
1931—Ida B. Wells Barnett dies. Barnett was one of the leading Black female activists in America for over 30 years. Born in Holly Springs, Miss., she became a crusading journalist against racism and injustice with her Memphis, Tennessee-based newspaper—“The Free Speech and Headlight.” When a prominent Memphis Black man (and friend of hers) was lynched in 1892, she launched a national campaign against lynching. In 1909, she became a member of the Committee of 40 which laid the foundation for the organization which would become the NAACP. But she later sided with scholar W.E.B. DuBois when he accused the NAACP of not being militant enough. Barnett would also later join with White suffragettes in demanding that women be given the right to vote.
1931—Nine Black Teens Arrested and Falsely Accused of Rape in Scottsboro, Alabama. Known as the “Scottsboro Boys” they were arrested and accused of raping two young White women—a crime which evidence suggests (then and now) never occurred. However, the saga of the nine Scottsboro Boys (young Black men aged 12 to 20) would stretch out over nearly 20 years in a series of trials, convictions, reversals, and retrials. The racism of the period was so thick that even when one of the young White women recanted and admitted that no rape had occurred, an all-White Alabama jury still found members of the group guilty and sentenced them to death. The convictions were overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court and more retrials and new convictions followed. Eventually, either by paroles or escapes, all the Scottsboro Boys would leave Alabama prisons. The last one died in 1989.
1942—Aretha Franklin, the “Queen of Soul” music, is born in Detroit, Mich.
March 26
1810—William Leidesdorff, the first African American citizen of San Francisco and the first African American millionaire (after gold was discovered on his property) was born in St. Croix, Virgin Islands.
1831—The founder of the African Methodist Episcopal Church Church, Richard Allen, dies at age 71 in Philadelphia, Pa. As its first bishop, Allen set the AME Church on the path to becoming the first Black religious denomination in America to be fully independent of White control. He, in effect, chartered a separate religious identity for African-Americans. He also founded schools throughout the nation to teach Blacks. This includes Allen University in Columbia, S.C.
1872—African American Inventor Thomas J. Martin patented the fire extinguisher
1937—William H. Hastie was confirmed as a judge of the Federal District Court in the Virgin Islands making him the first Black federal judge.
1944—Singer/Actress Diana Ross is born in Detroit, Mich. She headed the most popular female singing group of the 1960s—The Supremes.
Also on March 26, 1944, a group of white men brutally lynched the Rev. Isaac Simmons, a Black minister and farmer, so they could steal his land in Amite County, Mississippi. Members of his family, some of whom witnessed his murder, fled the state, fearing for their lives. The white men responsible for lynching him successfully stole Simmons’s land and were never convicted for their crimes.
1950—Singer Teddy Pendergrass is born in Philadelphia, Pa. For a period, Pendergrass was the leading sex symbol in R&B music. However, an automobile accident on March 18, 1982, left him paralyzed from the chest down. Pendergrass died Jan. 13, 2010.
1991—The Reverend Emmanuel Cleaver becomes the first African American mayor of Kansas City, Missouri.
March 27
1908— Alabama Representative James Thomas Heflin shot Louis Lundy, a Black man after he allegedly cursed in front of a white woman while riding on a Washington, D.C., streetcar. The congressman claimed that Mr. Lundy’s cursing was “raising a disturbance,” and he received an outpouring of support from the white public and his fellow representatives after shooting Mr. Lundy through his neck. He was never held accountable for shooting Mr. Lundy.
1924—The sensational three-time Grammy award-winner jazz vocalist Sarah Vaughn was born in Newark, New Jersey.
1970—Mariah Carey was born on this day in Long Island, N.Y. Her parents are of Irish/African-American/Venezuelan background. Carey came to prominence after releasing her self-titled debut studio album “Mariah Carey” in 1990; it went multiplatinum and spawned four consecutive number-one singles on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 chart. Under the guidance of Columbia Records executive and later husband Tommy Mottola, she continued booking success with follow-up albums “Emotions” (1991), “Music Box” (1993), and “Merry Christmas” (1994), Carey was established as Columbia’s highest-selling act. In 1998, she was honored as the world’s best-selling recording artist of the 1990s at the World Music Awards. She married actor/comedian Nick Cannon in 2008. She lists Aretha Franklin and Stevie Wonder as her favorite singers.
1997—Pamela Gordon became Bermuda’s first female prime minister.
March 28
1842—William Harvey Carney, an American Civil War soldier and the first African American to be awarded the Medal of Honor was born on this day in Norfolk, Virginia.
1900—The British demanded the Ashanti Golden Stool. Ironically, the Ashanti had been one of the tribes that had actually benefited from slavery by capturing and selling their fellow Africans. But when the slave trade ended, the British turned on the Ashanti in a bid to colonize the Gold Coast (now Ghana). In an apparent attempt to demoralize and humiliate the Ashanti, the British demanded that they turn over one of their greatest symbols—the Golden Stool. The demand led to war. The Ashanti were led by Queen Yaa Asantewa. Her fighters kept the British at bay for several months. But with superior firepower, the British eventually prevailed.
1925—Poet Countee Cullen wins Phi Beta Kappa honors at New York University
1958—A 22-year-old Black man named Jeremiah Reeves was executed by the State of Alabama after police tortured him until he gave a false confession as a 16-year-old child. In July 1951, Jeremiah, who was a 16-year-old high school student at the time, and Mabel Ann Crowder, a white woman, were discovered having sex in her home. Ms. Crowder claimed she had been raped by Jeremiah, and he was immediately arrested and taken to Kilby Prison for “questioning.” Police strapped the frightened boy into the electric chair and told him that he would be electrocuted unless he admitted to having committed all of the rapes white women had reported that summer. Under this terrifying pressure, he falsely confessed to the charges in fear. Though he soon recanted and insisted he was innocent, Jeremiah was convicted and sentenced to death after a two-day trial during which the all-white jury deliberated for less than 30 minutes.
1966—Bill Russell becomes the head coach of the Boston Celtics making him the first African American to coach an NBA team.
1968—A race riot in Memphis, Tennessee interrupts a protest march led by Martin Luther King Jr. in support of striking sanitation workers.
1972—The two surviving Soledad Brothers are found not guilty by an all-White jury in the alleged killing of a White guard at the California prison. The other Soledad Brother, revolutionary writer George Jackson, had been killed during an August 1971 Marin County Courthouse escape attempt, which also led to charges against college professor and communist Angela Davis. Davis was also eventually acquitted.
1984—Dr. Benjamin Mays dies. The president of Atlanta’s Morehouse College had been one of the leading Black educational figures in America during the 20th century.
March 29
1945— New York Knicks Basketball legend Walt Frazier was born in Atlanta, Georgia. As their floor general and top perimeter defender, he led the New York Knicks to the franchise’s only two championships (1970 & 1973) and was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 1987. Upon his retirement from basketball, Frazier went into broadcasting; he is currently a color commentator for telecasts of Knicks games on the MSG Network. In 1996, Frazier was honored as one of the league’s greatest players of all time by being named to the NBA 50th Anniversary Team. In October 2021, Frazier was again honored as one of the league’s greatest players of all time by being named to the NBA 75th Anniversary Team. Walt Frazier was also named the MVP of the first of two All-Star games played between ABA and NBA players in May 1971.
1964—An interracial group of nine men, including two Black men and seven white men, were arrested in Jackson, Mississippi for attending Easter services at the segregated Capitol Street Methodist Church, charged with trespassing and disturbing the peace
1981—Dr. Eric Eustace Williams the first Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago passes away
