Black History Month – February 25, 2016

Black History Month – February 25, 2016

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We salutes African Americans who've made & continue to make American history. To the artists, entrepreneur, business moguls, doctors and educators from the canvas to the stage.  To the poets, the authors, the inventors, innovators and trailblazers, we honor and remember them all, this and every Black History Month.

Happy Black History Month! According to Blackfacts.com it was on this day in black history.....

1999 - John King gets death penalty for dragging death of James Byrd

White supremacist John King, is sentenced to death for the murder of James Byrd.  King Lawrence Russell Brewer and Shawn Berry put a chain around James Byrd's neck and dragged him from the back of a pickup in Jasper, Texas.  They drug the 49-year old Byrd until he was decapitated and his arm was severed in the gruesome crime.
Lawrence Russell Brewer was the first white man in Texas to be put to death for killing a Black person, since slavery in 2011.  King sits on death row, awaiting his penalty to be carried out and Berry was spend the rest of his life in jail.
Byrd's lynching-by-dragging led to President Barack Obama passing the federal Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act, signed into law by the President in 2009
1998 - R Kelly's I Believe I Can Fly won three Grammy's
R. Kelly's hit single "I Believe I Can Fly" from the studio album R and the 1996 tittle track to the flick Space Jam, won three Grammy's.  The song would pick-up the Best Male R&B Vocal, Best Song Written for TV or a Movie and Best R&B Song Grammy Awards.

1980 - Robert E. Hayden dies

American poet, essayist, educator Robert E. Hayden died at 66.  Hayden was the first African-American writer to served as Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress. He would hold his position as, US Poet Laureate, from 1976–78.

1948 - Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. is Ordained

On this day in history activist, author, minister, humanitarian and leader of the Civil Rights Movement, Dr. Martin Luther King, was ordained at Ebenezer Baptist Church at the age of nineteen. King said he had "an inner urge to serve humanity." That he did.

1928 - One-Man Show of Art by Archibald J. Motley went on display

New Orleans native, Archibald J. Motley Jr, was the second African American to put on a one-man show and the first artist to make the front page of the New York Times on this day.  Motley's headline read, "One-Man Show of Art by Negro, First of Kind Here, Opens Today."  His show took place at the New Gallery on Madison Avenue featuring images of voodoo dances, various African scenes, and African-Americans at leisure and more.

For even more Black facts, click here.  Other sources on information found at Blackinventor.com, Wikipedia.com, and Biography.com

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