Death of Anthony Overton (81), publisher, cosmetics manufacturer and banker, Chicago.

Vermont became the first American colony to abolish slavery. By 1783 slavery was prohibited in Massachusetts and New Hampshire. Pennsylvania passed a gradual emancipation law in 1780. Connecticut and Rhode Island barred slavery in 1784 and were followed by New York (gradual emancipation) and New Jersey in 1799 and 1804, respectively. Slavery died in the North as a direct result of forces set in motion by the Rights of Man movement.

Marshall was born on July 2, 1908 in Baltimore, Maryland, the great-grandson of a slave.

Thurgood Marshall, born ‘Thoroughgood Marshall’, was born on July 2, 1908 in Baltimore, Maryland.

Anthony Foxx, the seventeenth United States Secretary of Transportation, was born April 30, 1971 in Charlotte, North Carolina, and raised by his mother, Laura Foxx, and grandparents James and Mary Foxx. He graduated from West Charlotte High School in 1989, and four years later received a Bachelor’s in history from Davidson College in Davidson, North Carolina.  Foxx was the first African American student body president at Davidson College. In 1996 Foxx earned a law degree from the New York University School of Law as a Root-Tilden Scholar, the most prestigious public service scholarship at the University.

After law school Foxx worked for a brief period at Smith, Helms, Mulliss & Moore, a Charlotte law firm.  He then clerked for Judge Nathaniel R. Jones of the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati, Ohio. From there Foxx worked as a trial attorney for the Civil Rights Division of the United States Department of Justice.  He also served as staff counsel to the United States House of Representatives Judiciary Committee.

Foxx entered politics in 2004 when he served as campaign manager for U.S. Congressman Mel Watt.  The following year Foxx ran successfully as the At-Large Councilman for the Charlotte City Council, and served two terms in this position, from 2005-2007 and 2007-2009.  As Councilman Foxx chaired the Transportation Committee, where he helped organize the most ambitious transportation bond package in the city’s history.  Foxx’s plan allowed Charlotte to take advantage of record-breaking low interest rates and construction prices, combined with the use of city surplus funds, to support an array of new projects without raising taxes.  

During this period Foxx also chaired the Mecklenburg-Union Metropolitan Planning Organization, the agency which oversaw planning for the greater Charlotte Metropolitan Area. Some of the initiatives Foxx led created jobs in Charlotte’s inner city, while others, such as a single stream recycling program and programs to reduce greenhouse gas, were designed to protect

On July 2, 2009 President Barack Obama appointed Gayleatha Beatrice Brown to be the United States ambassador to Burkina Faso, a nation in West Africa.  This was her second ambassadorial appointment. Previously, Brown had been appointed by President George W. Bush to serve as U.S. Ambassador to Benin, a post she held from 2006 to 2009.

Brown was born in Matawan, West Virginia on June 20, 1947.  Her family moved to New Jersey when she was a child and she graduated from Edison High School, in Edison, New Jersey in 1964. She received bachelor’s and master’s honor degrees from Howard University in Washington, D.C. in 1968 and 1970, respectively.  Brown also did post-graduate work in international relations at the School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland.

Before joining the United States Foreign Service in 1982, Brown was a Special Assistant at the Agency for International Development (USAID). She was later Assistant Administrator for Africa and a legislative assistant to the House of Representatives.

Brown had had extensive overseas experience before her ambassadorial appointment.  Her first posts were, successively, as Development Officer at the U.S. Embassies in Paris, France and Abidjan, Côte dIvoire.  She also served as Counselor for Political Affairs at the U.S. Embassy in Pretoria, South Africa, and U.S. Consul General and U.S. Deputy Permanent Observer (concurrently) to the Council of Europe in Strasbourg, France.  She was Chief of the Economic and Commercial Sections at the U.S. Embassies in Harare, Zimbabwe, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.  She was also desk officer at the U.S. State Department for Canada, Senegal, Guinea, and Mauritania.

Brown has represented the Department of State at the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) at Credit Arrangement negotiations, and she was a Desk Officer for the U.S. Export-Import Bank (EXIM).  

Brown’s honors and recognitions include the Lady of the Golden Horseshoe (West Virginia state

Civil Rights activist Medgar Evers born in Decatur, Mississippi.

President George Bush nominated conservative black Clarence Thomas to replace Thurgood Marshall.

Bishop R. C. Lawson died July 2, 1961 in New York City.

Bishop Lawson was the dynamic leader of The Church of Our Lord Jesus Christ of the Apostolic Church, head church - Refuge Temple Church, N.Y.

Under his guidance and spiritual leadership the organization grew to 125 churches in the United States, as well as, churches in Africa, Trinidad, Jamaica, the Dominican Republic and England.

source:Educationally Speaking, Refuge Temple Church, from the Library of Mr. Maurice Earle

Dr. Dawn Mason is a former Washington State Representative for the 37th District, an adjunct professor and former member of the Board of Visitors at Antioch University Seattle, and Vision and Planning Team Member for Cultural Reconnection (USA and Kenya). Mason was born in Jersey City, New Jersey on July 2, 1945. Her father, Deotis Taylor, built and owned race cars. He was also a track coach and founder of the Blazer Automotive Training School in Newark. Her mother, Helen Gordon Taylor, was a specialist in care of developmentally delayed children. She is the youngest of three siblings. Mason attended Kearny, New Jersey public schools, Tennessee State University, California State College Dominquez Hills, and The Evergreen State College, where she received her B.A. Degree in 1989. She received her M.Ed. degree from Antioch University in Seattle in 2002. She is a Flemming Fellow alum and retired City of Seattle Management Systems Analyst.

Mason served two two-year terms in the Washington State Legislature, 1995-97 and 1997-99. While there she was Assistant Minority Whip and Ranking Chair of the Higher Education Committee. The Washington Student Lobby presented her the Legislator of the Year Award in 1996 for her effective leadership in maintaining access to higher education for all students. In 1998 she was appointed by President Bill Clinton to the Women’s Economic Roundtable.

Dr. Masons commitment to public education led her to become the co-founder of Parents for Student Success in 1989. She is also an Emeritus Board member of the University of Washington Business Economic Center, and a past president of First Place, a Seattle-area agency serving the education and needs of homeless children. She is a freelance journalist and several of her articles have appeared in Seattle newspapers, The Medium, and South District Journal.

Masons interest in women in the African Diaspora has taken her from cities in the United States to the villages and slums of Nigeria in 1978 and South Africa in 1996. Dr. Mason

Ed Bullins , (born July 2, 1935, Philadelphia, Pa., U.S.), American playwright, novelist, poet, and journalist who emerged as one of the leading and most prolific dramatists of black theatre in the 1960s.

A high-school dropout, Bullins served in the U.S. Navy (1952–55) before resuming his studies in Philadelphia and at Los Angeles City College, San Francisco State College, and other schools. He ultimately completed his education at Antioch University, Yellow Springs, Ohio (B.A., 1989), and at San Francisco State University (M.F.A., 1994).

Bullins made his theatrical debut in August 1965 with the production of three one-act plays: How Do You Do?; Dialect Determinism; or, The Rally; and Clara’s Ole Man. After helping to found a black cultural organization and briefly associating with the Black Panther Party, Bullins moved to New York City.

His first full-length play, In the Wine Time (produced 1968), examines the scarcity of options available to the black urban poor. It was the first in a series of plays—called the Twentieth-Century Cycle—that centred on a group of young friends growing up in the 1950s. Other plays in the cycle are The Corner (produced 1968), In New England Winter (produced 1969), The Duplex (produced 1970), The Fabulous Miss Marie (produced 1971), Home Boy (produced 1976), and Daddy (produced 1977). In 1975 he received critical acclaim for The Taking of Miss Janie, a play about the failed alliance of an interracial group of political idealists in the 1960s.

Sharing the tenets of the Black Arts movement, Bullins’s naturalistic plays incorporated elements of black nationalism, “street” lyricism, and interracial tension. His other notable works include the plays Goin’ a Buffalo (produced 1968) and Salaam, Huey Newton, Salaam (produced 1991), as well as the short-story collection The Hungered One (1971) and the novel The Reluctant Rapist (1973).

In the same year of Gabriel Prossers death, 1800, a slave named Denmark Vesey gained his freedom in Charleston,

South Carolina. Warning that God helps those who helps themselves, Vesey laid

the plans for a massive slave revolt and enlisted the aid of over 9,000 slaves.

Using information cells which only allowed certain amounts of information to

limited amounts of people, Vesey organized a complex plot. Given its goals, the

revolt would have been impressive had the conspirators not been given away by a

fellow slave. Under arrest, in the face of continued threats, promises, and torture,

only one of the condemned men ever gave away information. One of the leaders,

a slave known as Peter Poyas, told his men, Do not open your lips. Die silent as

you shall see me do. Vesey and his co-conspirators were hanged on July 2,

1822, the freedom they sought finally at hand

Walter F. White, an Atlanta-born writer and civil rights leader, was honored by the NAACP in New York City for his work as the organizations Executive Secretary, his investigations of lynchings, and his lobbying for a federal anti-lynching law.

Thurgood Marshall , originally Thoroughgood Marshall (born July 2, 1908, Baltimore, Maryland, U.

Patrice Lumumba , in full Patrice Hemery Lumumba (born July 2, 1925, Onalua, Belgian Congo [now the Democratic Republic of the Congo]—died January 1961, Katanga province), African nationalist leader, the first prime minister of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (June–September 1960).

The first Black Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, born in Baltimore.

President Garfield shot in Washington, D.C. He died on September 19 and was succeeded by Vice-president Chester A. Arthur.

Candy, a slave, was acquitted of sorcery following her trial in Salem, Massachusetts.

Medgar Evers , in full Medgar Wiley Evers (born July 2, 1925, Decatur, Miss.

Edward Bullins: playwright and pioneer in the Black Arts Movement

Dexter Dillard Eure Sr., pioneering black newspaper columnist for the Boston Globe, was born in Suffolk, Virginia, an only child to Luke Eure and Sarah Sharpe. His father left the family when he was an infant and his mother died when he was 12. Eure spent the rest of his young life going back and forth living with extended family members and friends in Suffolk and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

After graduating from high school in Philadelphia in 1942, Eure went to what was then West Virginia State College (now University) where he earned a Bachelor of Science degree in mechanical engineering.  He got a few store advertising jobs after graduation including one at Macy’s in New York City, New York and another at Stop & Shop in Boston, Massachusetts.

Eure was drafted into the U.S. Army during the Korean War and was stationed at Fort Hood, Texas when he met his future wife, Marjorie Ann Lowe. They were married in 1952 when he came back from Korea and settled in Sharon, Massachusetts.  The marriage eventually ended in divorce but not before they raised three sons, Dexter D. Eure Jr., David D. Eure, and Philip K. Eure.

When Eure returned from Korea he got a series of jobs in advertising for newspaper publishers and a chain of food markets.  He also was a commercial artist for different firms and had his own advertising business. Eure took a job in the circulation department for the Boston Globe in 1963 and served as the public relations director of the Boston Branch of the NAACP starting the same year until 1964. After the murder of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968 Eure left the circulation department to become an assistant to Globe editor Thomas Winship. Winship gave Eure a column in the newspaper to add a different perspective to the paper’s coverage. Eure became the first black columnist in the history of the Globe.  In 1971, he was promoted to director of community affairs.

Eure worked for the newspaper for 25 years and even after retiring in 1988 he continued to retain a seat on the board of the Boston Globe

McCoy, E.

Lubricator for Steam Engines

July 02, 1872

Patent No. 129,843

Medgar Wiley Evers was born on July 2, 1925 in Decatur, Mississippi.

Robert Tools becomes the first recipient in the world of the Abiocor, self contained artificial heart at Jewish Hospital in Louisville, Kentucky.

Lt. Charles Hall, Brazil, Ind., became first Black pilot to shoot down Nazi plane.