This Week In Black History November 9 -15

This week, November 9 - 15 in Black History ...

November 9

1964 - Roger Arliner Young was the first black woman to receive a Ph.D/doctoral degree in zoology from University of Pennsylvania in 1940.

1956 - Dorothy Dandridge becomes the first black to sing a romantic lead at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City was Mattiwilda Dobbs as Gilda in Rigoletto.

1868 - The Medical School at Howard University opens with eight students.

1731 - The great African American inventor Benjamin Banneker was born on this day.

November 10

1960 - Andrew T. Hatcher became the first Black to hold an associate press secretary, for the President.

1957 - Charlie Sifford became the first African American to play in won the PGA tour and a Long Beach Open, becomining the first Black person to win a major professional golf tournament.

1898 - National Benefit Life Insurance Company organized in Washington, D.C. by Samuel w. Rutherford. It was one of the largest Black insurance company in the nation.

George P. White was an outspoken Republican political leader, two-term Congressman from the "Black 2nd" introduced the first anti-lynching legislation into the Congress on this day. (it was defeated)

1891 - Granville T Woods invented the electric railway.

November 11

1989 - Civil Rights Memorial is dedicated in Montgomery, AL

1979 - The Bethune Museum & Archives is established in Washington, DC

1969 - George R. Carruthers invents the image converter for detecting electromagnetic radiation.

1925 - Xavier University in New Orleans is founded on this day.

Louis Armstrong was the first to lay down Hot Five and Hot Seven recordings, which greatly influenced the direction of jazz.

November 12

1964 - Ernest Nathan Morial was elected the first black mayor of New Orleans, Louisiana.

1974 - South Africa was suspended from the U.N. General Assembly over its racial policies.

1941 - Opera singer, Madame Lillian Evanti, founds the National Negro Opera Company

1922 - Seven black women in Indianapolis, Indiana founded Sigma Gamma Rho sorority, based on a desire to raise the standards of teachers in normal and other schools

November 13 

1960 - Being elected mayor of Cleveland, Ohio made Carl Stokes the first Black to be elected mayor of a major city was Carl Stokes on this day..

1951 - Janet Collins, becomes the first Black ballerina and dancer to appear with the Metropolitan Opera Company.

1940 - The supreme court ruled in Hansberry vs Lee that whites can't stop African Americans from moving into white neighborhoods.

1913 - Dr. Daniel Hale Williams became the first Black elected to the American College of Surgeons on this day.

1894 - A. C. Richardson invents the casket lowering device.

November 14

1960 - Six year olds Leona Tate, Tessie Prevost, and Gail Etienne best known as The McDonough Three were escorted by U.S. Marshals and their parents to become the first African Americans to integrate all-white McDonogh No. 19 in New Orleans during the Civil Rights Movement.  On the same day, in the same city, six year old Ruby Bridges William Frantz Elementary.

1950 - Lydia M. Holmes, an African American inventor, of St. Augustine, Florida patented the knockdown wooden-wheeled toy.  This was a popular pull toy on wheels that was easily assembled and included a bird, a truck and dog.

1915 - Educator, author, orator, and presidential adviser Booker T. Washington died at 59 of hypertension and high blood pressure.

1839 - The 1st US anti-slavery political party known as the Liberty Party, gathered for the first time in New York.

November 15

2001 - Henry Ossawa Tanner, was the first black artist elected to full membership in the National Academy. He gained notoriety for his biblical paintings, on both sides of the Atlantic.

1990 -  The US Golf Association bans racial & gender discrimination.

1950 - Aurther "Art" Dorrington singed with the New York Rangers and became the first African American hockey player in the NHL.

1897 -  Langston University was founded.  To date is the only public and historically black college in Langston, Oklahoma.  Also on this date, Voorhees College was founded.  Voorhees continues to operate as a private, historically black college in Denmark, South Carolina. It is affiliated with the Episcopal Church and modeled on Tuskegee Institute.

1887 - Granville T. Woods patents one of his most notable out of his 50 inventions, the Multiplex Telegraph.  This device was used to send messages between train stations and moving trains. Thanks to Woods this device assured a safer and better public transportation system for cities across the nation.