John T. Walker installed as the first Black bishop of the Episcopal diocese of Washington.

Japanese Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone said the United States intelligence levels are lower than those in Japan because of African Americans, Hispanics and Puerto Ricans. Nakasone later apologized saying his remarks were misinterpreted.

Patrick Kelly, first and only American fashion designer admitted to an exclusive organization of French fashion designers, born

World Heavyweight Champion, Joe Louis, becomes the first Black boxer to draw a million dollar gate,

1935

William Henry Ellis, an African American businessman who challenged racial constructs in the United States by “passing” as Hispanic, was born a slave to Charles and Margaret Ellis on June 15, 1864. His parents had been brought by Joseph Weisiger from Kentucky to Texas in 1853. In 1870 the Ellis parents had gained their freedom and relocated to Victoria, Texas, where they established a home for themselves and their seven children.

In his youth, William Henry Ellis attended school in Victoria with his sister, Fannie, while his other siblings held full-time jobs as laborers or servants. Sometime during his teenage years, Ellis learned to speak fluent Spanish.

During his early twenties, Ellis was employed by William McNamara, a cotton and hide dealer, and constantly conducted business with Spanish-speaking businessmen. Eventually, Ellis made a name for himself in the trade. Around 1887, Ellis settled permanently in San Antonio, Texas, and began calling himself “Guillermo Enrique Eliseo,” spreading a fabricated story of his Cuban and Mexican ancestry in newspapers and social circles to conceal his real racial identity, thus enjoying some of the freedoms other African Americans could not experience at the time. He balanced these two identities for the rest of his life.

By the early 1890s, Ellis was swept into Texas politics. In 1888 he gave a speech in support of Norris Wright Cuney that landed Ellis an appointment to the Texas Republican Party’s Committee on Resolutions. By 1892, Ellis was nominated to represent the 83rd District in the Texas Legislature but lost the election to A.G. Kennedy, a white Democrat. Ellis would never seek public office again.

As time went on, Ellis began embracing ideas of African American colonization abroad, especially in Mexico. He was once quoted as saying, “Mexico has no race prejudice from a social standpoint.” Twice during the 1890s, Ellis attempted to create a colony for blacks in Mexico from the southern United States. Both attempts would fail. The first, started in 1889, fell

Cardiss Robertson Collins, elected the U.S. House of Representatives, born

President Eisenhower ordered federal troops to Little Rock, Ark., to prevent interference with school integration at Central High School.

Few people connect Washington Territory with slavery.  However one incident in 1860 was a reminder that the peculiar institution reached the pre-Civil War Pacific Northwest.  In the account below, historian Lorraine McConaghy describes the saga of Charles Mitchell whose attempted escape from slavery in a vessel sailing between Olympia, Washington Territory and Victoria, British Colombia, touched off an incident that had international repercussions.

In 1847, Charles Mitchell was born at Marengo Plantation on Chesapeake Bay in Talbot County, Maryland. His father was a white oyster fisherman named Charles Mitchell; his mother was a young black house slave whose name is unknown to us.  We do not know anything about the relationship between Charles Mitchell senior and the house slave, but it may have been consensual or even loving since the boy was named for his father. In any case, slavery ran through the female line, and so Charles Mitchell was born a slave, despite his father’s freedom.  

Slaves had been born, toiled, and died at Marengo Plantation for more than 150 years. Marengo had been named by the grandson of the plantation’s founder, Jacob Gibson, in admiration for a victory of Napoleon Bonaparte. The Gibson family presided over Marengo, and the plantation’s fields grew tobacco profitably until the soil was depleted. The land was then switched to wheat. In about 1800, there were three dozen slaves on Marengo Plantation; in the 1850 slave census, there were thirteen.  Charles Mitchell’s mother was one of them, the personal servant of Mistress Rebecca Gibson; the two women had grown up together.

It is likely that the young black woman’s sister, parents, and grandparents, along with Charles, were all living as a family within the slave quarters.  During the great cholera epidemic of 1850, Charles’ mother fell ill and died. According to Gibson family tradition, Rebecca Gibson asked the dying woman what she could do for her. “Take care of my Charlie,” was her reply, and Rebecca answered, “I will.”  

The Gibson

Frances Ellen Watkins Harper

WRITER

Birthplace: Baltimore Maryland

September 24,1825- February 22,1911

Frances was born to free black parents who died when she was three years old. At

age 13, she did domestic work for a family who let her use their library. Soon she

began to write her own poetry and in 1854 her collection of verse and prose, Forest

Leaves, was published.

When she moved to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to teach in the early 1850s, she joined the fight against

slavery with her writings. As she became more involved in the anti-slavery movement, she became an

effective speaker whose sense of humor could draw large audiences. In 1854, she toured Canada and her

writings appeared frequently in the Provincial Freeman, an antislavery newspaper. In 1859, she became

the first Black American to publish a short story, The Two Officers. Her novel, Iola Leroy or Shadows

Uplifted, which was published in 1892, made her the second Black woman to have a novel published in

the United States.

Edward Franklin Frazier was born on this day.

National Black convention met in Louisville, Kentucky.

Franklin Frazier , in full Edward Franklin Frazier (born September 24, 1894, Baltimore, Maryland, U.

Take a Giant Step, drama by playwright Louis Peterson, opened on Broadway.

Cardiss Robertson Collins was born September 24, 1931 in St.

Executive Order 11246 enforces affirmative action for the first time

Issued by President Johnson, the executive order requires government contractors to take affirmative action toward prospective minority employees in all aspects of hiring and employment. Contractors must take specific measures to ensure equality in hiring and must document these efforts.

Saint Paul’s College of Virginia is a private college located in Lawrenceville, Virginia.  The college was founded on September 24, 1888, by James Solomon Russell, a newly-ordained deacon in the Protestant Episcopal Church. He became the first principal of the institution, which in 1890 was incorporated as the Saint Paul’s Normal and Industrial School by the Virginia Assembly.  On the first day of class in 1888, the school had fewer than a dozen students in attendance.  Russell remained principal of Saint Paul’s Normal until his retirement forty years later in 1928.

Russell argued that a school was needed to train African American teachers in Virginia and across the South.  Although a number of other black colleges had been founded with the same mission, Russell believed that more institutions were needed to carry on this work and that the Episcopal Church should support this endeavor.  

Despite the early desire to train teachers, Saint Pauls earliest students were in enrolled in what was essentially a vocational high school that taught basic skills and trades.  A collegiate department of teacher training was finally established in 1922 and accredited by the Virginia State Board of Education in 1926. From that point Saint Paul’s Normal and Industrial School trained teachers for the segregated schools of Virginia as well as the neighboring states of Maryland and North Carolina.  

In 1941 the institution adopted a new name, St. Pauls Polytechnic Institute, when the state granted it the authority to offer a four-year program.  The first bachelors degrees were awarded in 1944.  By 1957 the institution adopted its present name, Saint Pauls College of Virginia, to reflect its liberal arts and teacher education curricula.  

Saint Paul’s is a predominately African American college but it is now open to all races. As of September 2009 it had an enrollment of 681 students.  St. Pauls College offers degrees in liberal arts, social sciences, education, business, mathematics and natural sciences.  It also maintains the

Soldiers of 101st Airborne Division escorted nine Black students to Central High school.

Nine Black students started Little Rock high school, 1957

Lawrence Winters was born Lawrence Whisonant on November 12, 1915, in Kings Creek, South Carolina, one of three sons of Eliza Whisonant (née Smith) and Marion Frank Whisonant, a farmer. He took private voice lessons before entering Howard University where he was coached by the distinguished African American baritone Todd Duncan, and graduated with a degree in music in 1941. Winters was Duncan’s understudy for the role of Porgy in the 1942 Broadway revival of George Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess. During the turbulent years of World War II, he was an Army sergeant serving stateside at Fort Huachuca where his bass-baritone voice was put to good use on ceremonial occasions. In January 1943, he sang at President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s birthday ball and in June of that year married Aida B. Alston in New York City.

New opportunities opened in the post-World War II era. Winters’s first big break occurred in 1946 when he starred in the Broadway musical Call Me Mister which garnered him national acclaim. His inaugural recital at New York’s Town Hall in 1947 was eclipsed by his performances as the first black singer in the New York City Opera (NYCO) starting with Aida in 1948, followed by roles in, among others, William Grant Still’s Troubled Land, Offenbach’s The Tales of Hoffman, Bizet’s Carmen, Menotti’s Amahl and the Night Visitors, Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro, and Puccini’s La bohème. In between NYCO engagements, he concertized in the West Indies, Central America, Brazil, and Europe where he launched his international tours in Berlin in 1949 and joined the Royal Swedish Opera in 1950. One reporter recalled: “Winters was a tall, handsome man who strode impressively across the operatic and Broadway stages…. (He) received widespread acclaim from music critics and thunderous ovations from his audiences.” A Swiss critic observed: “To a German-speaking singer, who struggles with difficulties of declamation and other imperfections, one could not recommend a better model than this Negro baritone, who feels so much at home

U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ordered Board of Higher Education of Mississippi to admit Meredith to the university or be held in contempt.