This Black History Month, 107 Jamz celebrates African Americans who've made a difference in American History.  Find out what happened on this day in Black History.

Photo by Trevor Humphries/Getty Images
Photo by Trevor Humphries/Getty Images
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Through life changing inventions, heroic deeds throughout the civil rights movement, educating or protecting Air Force bombers in the sky, African Americans have made countless contributions to this country.  Black History month gives us an opportunity to give them their props.

1870- Wyatt Outlaw of the Union League was lynched.

Wyatt Outlaw, was the first African-American Town Commissioner and Constable of  Graham, North Carolina. He lynched and State Senator John W. Stephens was assassinated by the Ku Klux Klan on on this day at the Caswell County Courthouse.

The murders provoked Governor William Woods Holden to declare martial law in Alamance and Caswell Counties, which spark the beginning of the Kirk-Holden War of 1870.

Outlaw served in the 2nd Regiment U. S. Colored Cavalry from 1864-1866 and when he returned from service enjoyed a prominent lifestyle in Alamance County.  Outlaw was among the a number of trustees who were deeded land for the establishment of the first African Methodist Episcopal Church.  He was a active and respected member of the Republican Party as well.

Later Outlaw was appointed to the Graham Town Council by Governor Holden and became one of three African-Americans constables in the town.  This made him a target of the White Brotherhood, the Constitutional Union Guard and the Klan.  White residents of the area who were incensed by the thought of being policed by an all African-American constabulary staged a nighttime ride in Klan garb through the streets of Graham trying to scare them.  Outlaw wasn't deterred and even though their were now injuries, he another constable open-fire on the riders.

Outlaw's aggressive response led to his murder as a party of unidentified men road into Graham, dragged him from his home and hung him from a tree in the courthouse square. Outlaw's body bore on the chest a message from the perpetrators: "Beware, ye guilty, both black and white."  A local African-American resident claimed to know who was responsible for the lynching, but was found dead in a nearby pond.

In 1873, Guilford County Superior Court Judge Albion Tourgee brought felony indictments against 63 Klansmen, including 18 murder counts in connection with the lynching of Wyatt Outlaw, but the rulings would later be repealed and no one paid for the Outlaw's murder.

1877- Conference in the Wormley Hotel

At a conference in the Wormley Hotel in Washington, leaders of the Republican and Democratic parties resolved the disputed Rutherford B. HayesSamuel J. Tilden presidential election of 1876. This agreement paved the way for the election of Hayes as president and the withdrawal of federal troops from the South.

 1926- Dr. Carter Godwin Woodson founded Negro History Week.

1928- The legendary "Fats" Domino was born.

1930- The Green Pastures opens at Mansfield Theater

The Green Pastures Broadway production opened at Mansfield Theater in New York on this day.

1933- Actor/Comedian Godfrey Cambridge is born.

1946- Race riot, Columbia, Tennessee

Race riot, Columbia, Tennessee began after a shooting between white policemen and black soldiers of the Union Army.  A mob of white civilians and policemen rampaged through black neighborhoods and houses of freedmen, attacking and killing men, women and children.

Federal troops were sent to quell the violence and peace was restored on the third day.  Because of this the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution to grant full citizenship to freedmen, and paved the way for the Reconstruction Act to established,

1964- Cassius Clay changes his name to Muhammad Ali.

On this day, the Kentucky boxer known as Cassius Clay, changed his name to Muhammad Ali as he accepted Islam and rejected Christianity. "I believe in the religion of Islam. I believe in Allah and in peace...I'm not a Christian anymore."

1966- Andrew Brimmer became the first African American governor of the Federal Reserve Board.

After graduating from Harvard Andrew Brimmer became assistant secretary of economic affairs in the U.S. Department of Commerce.  In 1966, President Lyndon B. Johnson, Brimmer became the first African American governor of the Federal Reserve Board and served for 8 years.

 

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