107 Jamz Celebrates Black History Month – Today In Black History February 20th [VIDEO]

This Black History month we salute African American who made American history.

On this day in black history in 1895, Frederick Douglass died on this day at the age of 78. Anacostia Heights, District of Columbia.  By the time of the Civil War, Douglass was one of the most famous black men in the country not only fighting for the rights of African Americans, but other issues like womens rights.  He was an American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman.  After escaping from slavery, he became a leader of the abolitionist movement, gaining note for his dazzling oratory and incisive antislavery writing.  As a matter of fact, he stood as a living counter-example to slaveholders' arguments that slaves did not have the intellectual capacity to function as independent American citizens.

On February 20, 1895, Douglass attended a meeting of the National Council of Women in Washington, D.C. During that meeting, he was brought to the platform and given a standing ovation by the audience.  Shortly after he returned home, Frederick Douglass died of a massive heart attack or stroke in Washington, D.C.  His funeral was held at the Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church where thousands passed by his coffin paying tribute.  He was buried in the Douglass family plot of Mount Hope Cemetery in Rochester, New York where he had lived for 25 years, longer than anywhere else in his life.

On this day in history,  Sidney Poitier was born in 1927 in Miami, Florida.  In 1963, Poitier was the first African American to win an Academy Award in a starring role in Lilies of the Field.  In 1967 when he starred in -To Sir, with Love; In the Heat of the Night; and Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, he become a box office king.

In 1999, the American Film Institute named Poitier among the Greatest Male Stars of All Time, black or white.  Here's the story of the legendary Sidney Poitier.

However, he made history on this day in 1929 when his play Harlemopened in New York, becoming the first African American playwright to do so.

On this day John Hope died of pneumonia in 1936 at the age of 67.  John Hope was an important African American educator and race leader of the early twentieth century. In 1906 he became the first black president of Morehouse College. Twenty-three years later, in 1929, Hope went on to become the first African American president of Atlanta University (later Clark Atlanta University). Under his leadership, Atlanta University became the first college in the nation to focus exclusively on graduate education for African American students.

In 1993, he was voted the league's Most Valuable Player and during the NBA's 50th anniversary, named one of the 50 Greatest Players in NBA History.  He competed in the 1992 and 1996 Olympic games and won two gold medals as a member of the United States' Dream Team.  In 2006, Barkley was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame.

On this day in 1968, state troopers used tear gas to stop demonstrations at Alcorn A&M College.  Alcorn is the oldest public historically black land-grant institution in the United States and the second oldest state supported institution of higher learning in Mississippi.  When it was founded in 1871, In the afternoon, they worked in the various shops for eight cents per hour. Room and board, including laundry, equated to five dollars a month.