- 1821 – Elizabeth Blackwell is born. She became the first fully accredited female doctor in the U.S. (1849)
- 1870 – The 15th Amendment passes and is sent to the states for ratification. It grants suffrage to Black men upon ratification.
- 1874 – Gertrude Stein is born. You probably know her as the poet with the phrase “A rose is a rose is a rose is a rose.
- 1874 – Blanche Kelso Bruce, born a slave, is elected to a full six-year term in the U.S. Senate by the Mississippi legislature. He is the first Black senator to serve a full term.
- 1878 – Hattie Wyatt Caraway is born. She was the first woman elected to the U.S. Senate (1932, D-AR) and the first woman to preside over the Senate (1943).
- 1889 – Belle Starr, the “Bandit Queen” outlaw, is killed with two shotgun blasts to the back..
- 1920 – The Negro Baseball League is founded.
- 1924 – Woodrow Wilson dies at the age of 67.
- 1930 – Ruth Ross is born. She became a magazine editor and helped found “Essence” (1970), the first magazine to celebrate the intellect and beauty of Black women and published articles from leading Black scholars and writers. However the magazine feared advertising losses and fired her so the magazine could become “less black.”
- 1944 – U.S. troops capture the Marshall Islands.
- 1953 – Jacques Cousteau’s “The Silent World” is published.
- 1956 – Autherine Lucy becomes the first Black American to attend the University of Alabama. By Lucy’s 3rd day, she had been threatened by angry white mobs and had to lock herself in a classroom. The University eventually expelled her. In 1988, they apologized.
- 1959 – “The Day the Music Died,” when Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and J.P Richardson are killed in a plane crash in Iowa.
- 1964 – School officials reported that 464,361 Black and Puerto Rican students – about 45% – boycotted New York City public schools after civil rights leaders called for a one-day boycott to protest segregation and over-crowding of non-White schools.
- 1981 – The US Air Force Academy drops its ban on applicants with sickle cell trait, following class action lawsuits by cadets who were forced to resign or who were not admitted based on that trait alone. Sickle cell trait is more common in certain ethnic groups, predominately Black but also Hispanic people, people from South Asia and the Middle East and Caucasians from southern Europe.
- 1994 – President Clinton ends trade embargo with Vietnam.
- 1998 – A U.S. Marine jet severed a ski-lift cable, sending a tram crashing to the ground and killing 20.
- 1988 – Thomas Reed, president of the Alabama chapter of the NAACP was arrested after and and 11 others attempted to strike a Confederate flag from the top of the state capitol.
- 2002 – New England Patriots defeat the heavily favored St. Louis Rams in their first Super Bowl win.
- 2005 – Alberto Gonzales becomes the first Hispanic U.S. Attorney General.
