On This Day

06 October 1917 - Fannie Lou Townsend Hamer Fannie Lou Townsend Hamer rose from humble beginnings in the Mississippi Delta to become one of the most important, passionate, and powerful voices of the civil and voting rights movements and a leader in the efforts for greater economic opportunities for African Americans. Hamer was born on October 6, 1917 in Montgomery County, Mississippi, the 20th and last child of sharecroppers Lou Ella […]

5 October 1995 - Barbara Jordan  On October 5, 1995, three months before her death, former Congresswoman Barbara Jordan received the Sylvanus Thayer Award named in honor of Sylvanus Thayer, Class of 1808, who was the thirty-third graduate of the Academy and who nine years later became its fifth superintendent.  The award is presented by the Association of Graduates of the United States Military Academy to an outstanding citizen of […]

  04 October 2013 - Juanita Jewel Shanks A small but growing number of black women are slowly being recognized for their contributions to the “long” civil rights movement, the nearly century-long struggle by African Americans against all forms of racial discrimination. In the account below University of Texas-El Paso historian Cecilia Gutierrez Venable describes Juanita Jewel Shanks Craft, one of the most important of these activists in 20th Century […]

  3 October 1954 - Alfred Charles Sharpton Born in Brooklyn, New York on October 3, 1954, Alfred Charles Sharpton, Jr., is an American Baptist minister and political, social, and human rights advocate.  Known as “the Wonder Boy” as a youth, he was licensed and ordained as a Pentecostal minister and toured with the gospel singer Mahalia Jackson.  In the late 1980’s, Sharpton became a Baptist minister. Often criticized and […]

  02 October 1936 J. Gary Cooper, military, government, and business leader, was appointed United States Ambassador to Jamaica by President Bill Clinton in 1994. He was the first African American to occupy the position. Prior to his appointment, he had a distinguished military career. Jerome Gary Cooper was born on October 2, 1936 in Lafayette, Louisiana to a devout Catholic family, but grew up in segregated Mobile, Alabama and attended McGill-Toolen Catholic High School.  Based on a recommendation from Archbishop Fulton Sheen of New York, he won an […]

Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Civil Rights Leader   The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (15 January 1929– 4 April 1968) was the charismatic leader of the U.S. civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s. He directed the year-long Montgomery bus boycott, which attracted scrutiny by a wary, divided nation, but his leadership and the resulting Supreme Court ruling against bus segregation brought him fame. He formed […]