Celebrating Black history month: February 1 to February 4

Educator Carter Goodwin Woodson is known as the father of Black History.  He earned a doctorate in history from Harvard where he recorded the history of Africans and African Americans and on February 1, 1926, established the second week of February as Negro History Week.  Woodson selected this week because it contained the birthdays of Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln, both men of influence and important to the black community.  The event was later renamed Black History Week and in 1976, began to be celebrated throughout the whole month of February.

Here are some events that took place February 1 to February 4 to share with family and friends.

February 1: 

1. In 1865, John Rock becomes the first African American lawyer to practice before the US Supreme Court.
2. In 1960, A Greensboro, NC protest begins the sit-in movement when four African American college students from North Carolina A &  T University sit at a “whites-only” Woolworth’s lunch counter and refuse to leave when denied service.

February 2:

1. In 1948, President Harry S. Truman sends a message to Congress pressing for civil rights legislation, including ant lynching, fair employment practices, and anti-poll tax provisions.
2. In 1988, A commemorative stamp of James Weldon Johnson is issued by the US Postal Service as part of tis Black Heritage USA series.

February 3:

1. In 1874, Blanche Kelso Bruce is elected to the US Senate from Mississippi.  He will be the first African American senator to serve a full term and the first to preside over the Senate during a debate.
2. In 1989, Former Saint Louis Cardinals first baseman Bill White is named president of the National League.  He is the first African American to head a major sports league.

February 4:

1. In 1913, Rosa Parks is born in Tuskegee, Alabama.  When the seamstress and NAACP member refuses to yield her seat to a white on a Montgomery bus in 1955, her actions will spark a 382-day boycott of the buses in Montgomery, halting business and services in the city and becoming the initial act of nonviolent disobedience of the American civil rights movement.
2. In 1986, A stamp of Sojourner Truth is issued by the US Postal Service as part of its Black Heritage USA commemorative series.  Truth was in abolitionist and a famous “conductor” on the Underground Railroad.