107 Jamz Celebrates Black History Month – Today In Black History February 8th

This Black History month we salute African Americans who made American history.  On this day in black history:

February 8, 1990

Andy Rooney, a CBS "60 Minutes" commentator, received a 90-day suspension from work, because of racist remarks about minorities and African Americans.  His suspension came after an interview with Chris Bull, a New York-based reporter for "The Advocate," a bi-weekly national gay & lesbian newsmagazine. Bull quoted Rooney as having said during an interview:

"I've believed all along that most people are born with equal intelligence, but Blacks have watered down their genes because the less intelligent ones are the ones that have the children. They drop out of school early, do drugs, and get pregnant."

February 8, 1986

One of my favorite Figure skaters, Debi Thomas became the first African American to win the Women's Singles in the U.S. National Figure Skating Championship competition.  Ironically,  she was a pre-med student at Stanford University at the time.  Check out the performance that won her the championship!

They don't call her the "Queen" of talk radio for nothing.  Also in 1986, Oprah Winfrey became the first African American woman to host a nationally syndicated talk show.  The Oprah Winfrey Show will go down in history as the most watched talk show in history.  For that matter, Oprah was and still is one of the highest paid people in Hollywood.  She's still going strong too  Now she does her show on her OWN network.  Take a look at the commercial advertizing the premiere of her first show.

February 8, 1978

Leon Spinks defeated "The Greatest," Muhammad Ali for heavyweight boxing championship.  Ali would later regain the title on September 15 and became the first person to win the title three times.  Here's the legendary fight as it happened back in 78'.

February 8, 1968

Officers killed several students during a demonstration on the campus of South Carolina State in what's known as the Orangeburg massacre.  The 200 students were protesting racial segregation at a local bowling alley.  Here's more details on what happened from a former student, who survived the massacre.

On this day in 1944 Harry S. McAlphin, became the first African American  reporter to attend a White House press conference with the President.

In 1925, Marcus Garvey entered federal prison in Atlanta. Born in Jamaica, Garvey arrived in America in 1916.  He accomplished a lot while he was here; founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League, the leader of pan-Africanist promoted the Back-To-Africa Movement, founded the shipping and passenger line The Black Star Line, the Negro World newspaper and the Negro Factories Corporation just to name of few.  He would be indicted in 1923 of mail fraud, in 1925 he went to jail for the alleged crime and served two years.  Afterward he was deported back to Jamaica.  He died in London at age 52, do to complications of two previous strokes in 1940

Students staged strike at Fisk University, to protest racist policies of the schools white administration.  And on February 8, 1894, Congress repealed the Enforcement Act.  This bill protected African-Americans' right to vote, to hold office, to serve on juries, and receive equal protection of laws.  When the bill was repealed, it made it easier for some states to disenfranchise African American voters and legally discriminate against them.