Virginia State University is founded.

Voices of the Civil War Episode 14, Detroit Draft Riot, highlights a major riot within Detroit, Michigan, as one of many riots across the country in response to the Enrollment Act of Conscription. Similar to the riot in New York, the Detroit riot was in response to race and class tension surrounding the issues of slavery, draft exemption, and employment. On March 6, 1863 white Detroiters used the trial of William Faulkner as a catalyst to destroy property within black neighborhoods.

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Nigerian nationalist, politician, lawyer, statesman, and chancellor, Chief Jeremiah Obafemi Awolowo was born on March 6, 1909 in Ogun State, Nigeria, where he commenced his political career.

Avant, born on March 6, 1968, is the daughter of Clarence Avant and Jacqueline Avant, both veterans of the music recording industry.

In 1977, five years after her death on March 6, 1972, the Seattle Art Museum honored Zoë Dusanne with an exhibition of contemporary art that included works by many of the artists whom Zoë had promoted.

Donald Payne, a Democrat, was the first African American elected to Congress from the State of New Jersey.  Payne was born in Newark, New Jersey on July 16, 1934. He earned a B.A. degree in social studies from Seton Hall University in 1957 and also has honorary doctorates from Chicago State University, Drew University, Essex County College, and William Patterson University.

After graduating in 1957 Payne began working for the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA), traveling around the world as its representative.  In 1970 Payne became its first African American president. From 1973 to 1981 he chaired the YMCA Refugee and Rehabilitation Committee that was based in Geneva.  In 1972 he was elected to the Essex County (New Jersey) Board of Chosen Freeholders, and became its director in 1977.

Donald Payne challenged longtime Congressional incumbent Peter W. Rodino Jr. in the Democratic primary in both 1980 and 1986 but failed both times. In 1988 however, when Rodino said he would not seek a 21st term, Payne won nomination and was elected to Congress.

Payne was a former chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus, a member of the Democratic Whip Organization, and had been on the House Democratic Leadership Advisory Group and the Democratic Steering Committee. Payne received a presidential appointment in 2003 and again in 2005 from President George W. Bush to be one of two Congressional delegates to the United Nations.

A dedicated advocate of education, Payne was a member of the House Committee on Education and Labor through which he worked with the Subcommittee on Workforce Protections and the Subcommittee on Early Childhood, Elementary, and Secondary Education. He was also a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee, chaired the Subcommittee on Africa and Global Health, and belonged to the Subcommittee on International Organizations, Human Rights, and Oversight.

Payne headed a presidential humanitarian mission to Rwanda, had been heavily supportive of the Northern Ireland peace process, and worked with the

Population: 24,339,838 (July 2010 estimate)

Capital: Accra

Bordering Countries: Burkina Faso, Cote dIvoire, Togo

Land Area: 92,098 square miles (238,533 sq km)

Coastline: 335 miles (539 km)

Highest Point: Mount Afadjato at 2,887 feet (880 m)

Ghana is a country located in western Africa on the Gulf of Guinea. The country is known for being the second largest producer of cocoa in the world as well as its incredible ethnic diversity.

Ghana is currently has more than 100 different ethnic groups in its population of just over 24 million.

History of Ghana

Ghanas history prior to the 15th century is concentrated primarily on oral traditions, however it is believed that people may have inhabited what is present day Ghana from about 1500 B.C.E. European contact with Ghana began in 1470. In 1482, the Portuguese built a trading settlement there. Shortly thereafter for three centuries, the Portuguese, English, Dutch, Danes and Germans all controlled different parts of the coast.

In 1821, the British took control of all of the trading posts located on the Gold Coast. From 1826 to 1900, the British then fought battles against the native Ashanti and in 1902, the British defeated them and claimed the northern part of todays Ghana.

In 1957, after a plebiscite in 1956, the United Nations determined that the territory of Ghana would become independent and combined with another British territory, British Togoland, when the entire Gold Coast became independent.

On March 6, 1957, Ghana became independent after the British gave up control of the Gold Coast and the Ashanti, the Northern Territories Protectorate and British Togoland. Ghana was then taken as the legal name for the Gold Coast after it was combined with British Togoland in that year.

Following its independence, Ghana underwent several reorganizations which caused the country to be divided into ten different regions.

Kwame Nkrumah was the first Prime Minister and President of modern Ghana and he had goals of unifying Africa as well as freedom and justice and equality

March 6th, 1957, the Gold Coast gained its independence from Great

Britain.

Independence Square celebrations - Accra, Ghana

Ghana - Political History

Ghana lies at the heart of a region which has been leading sub-Saharan

African culture since the first millennium BC in metal-working, mining,

sculpture and agriculture.

Modern Ghana takes its name from the ancient kingdom of Ghana, some 800 km.

(500 miles) to the north of present day Accra, which flourished up to the

eleventh century AD. One of the great sudanic states which dominate African

history, the kingdom of Ghana controlled the gold trade between the mining

areas to the south and the Saharan trade routes to the north. Ancient Ghana

was also the focus for the export trade in Saharan copper and salt.

The coming of Europeans altered the trading patterns, and the focus of

economic power shifted to the West African coastline. The Portuguese came

first, seeking the source of the African gold. It lay too far inland for

them to reach; but on the Gold Coast they found a region where gold could be

obtained, exported along established trade paths from the interior. Their

fort at Elmina (the mine) was the first in a series of forts along the

Gold Coast designed to repel the other European seafarers who followed in

their wake, all struggling for their share of the profitable Gold Coast

trade.

In due course, however, slaves replaced gold as the most lucrative trade

along the coast, with the European slave buyers using the forts and

adjoining buildings for their own accommodation and protection, as well as

for storing the goods, mainly guns and gunpowder, which they would barter

for slaves. Some of the forts were also used for keeping newly acquired

slaves pending the arrival of the ships sent to collect them.

But while Europeans quarrelled over access to the coastal trade, and despite

the appalling depredations of the slave traders, which left whole regions

destroyed and depopulated, the shape of modern Ghana was being laid down. At

the end of the 17th

Dred Scott, was an enslaved person noted mainly for the unsuccessful lawsuit brought to free him from bondage. The decision rendered by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1857 in the Dred Scott case, said that no blacks slave or free were U.S. citizens and allowed slavery in all U.S. territories.  The decision helped propel the United States toward the Civil War.

Scott was born into slavery in Southampton, Virginia, around 1795, the property of the Peter Blow family. He was given the name “Sam” but took the name of his older brother, Dred, when the latter died.  Scott was taken by the Blow family to Huntsville, Alabama where they settled on a nearby farm.  When farming proved unsuccessful, the family in 1830 relocated to St. Louis, Missouri.  In 1831 his owner, Peter Blow, died, John Emerson, U.S. Army surgeon, bought him and took him to Fort Armstrong, in 1833 when Emerson was assigned there.  In 1836 Emerson was transferred to Fort Snelling in Wisconsin Territory (later Minnesota Territory) and Scott was taken with Emerson. 

In 1836, Scott who was approximately 41, married a teenaged slave, Harriett Robinson, at Fort Snelling who was owned by another U.S. Army officer, Major Lawrence Taliaferro of Virginia.  Scott and Robinson gave birth to their first child, Eliza, in 1838 and a second daughter, Lizzie, in 1840.  The U.S. Army reassigned Emerson to Jefferson Barracks, south of St. Louis in 1837 and Fort Jessup, Louisiana, in 1838.  The Scotts were brought briefly to Louisiana where Emerson married Irene Sanford, a native of New York.  The Emersons and Scotts returned to Fort Snelling later in 1848 and remained there for four years until 1842 when Emerson permanently left the Army and settled in St. Louis with the Scott family.  By this point Scott had been in free territory nearly a decade, Harriett even longer, and their two children were born free.   

In 1843, Emerson died and left his estate to his widow, Irene Sanford Emerson. When Scott offered to purchase his freedom for $300 in 1846, Emerson refused his

Alice Ruth Moore, educator, author and social activist, was born on July 19, 1875 in New Orleans, Louisiana to Patricia (Wright) Moore and Monroe Moore.  She attended public school in New Orleans and enrolled in the teacher training program at Straight University in that city in 1890. Two years later she graduated and began teaching in New Orleans.    

Moore developed her literary skills while teaching and soon became a prolific writer.  Her first book, Violets and Other Tales, a collection of short stories, was published in 1895. Later that year she published The Goodness of St. Rocque, and Other Short Stories.  Through her career Alice Moore wrote four novels, two volumes of oratory, dramas, newspaper columns, two collections of essays, poems, short stories and reviews, many of which drew on her extensive knowledge of Creole culture.  In all of these collections, Alice Moore proved to be a perceptive critic of American society.  

Alice Moore was married three times.  Her first marriage was to Paul Laurence Dunbar, the poet.  Dunbar noticed her picture and one of her poems in the Boston Monthly Review in 1895, and was instantly infatuated.  They began a two year correspondence and finally met in February 1897. They were married on March 6, 1898 in New York City, New York and moved to Washington, D.C.  The marriage initiated a tumultuous relationship and they separated in 1902.  As husband and wife they shared literary pursuits and celebrity status in Washington, but their life together was marred by Paul’s physically abusive treatment of Alice.  In one incident she was sent to a Washington, D.C. hospital where she nearly died after his attack.  

After the separation Alice Moore Dunbar moved to Wilmington, Delaware.  She worked at Howard High School in an assortment of positions, and was involved in several intimate relationships with both men and women.  She secretly married fellow teacher Henry A. Callis in 1910, but divorced him shortly after.  It was not until her third marriage in 1916 to Robert J. Nelson,

Howard Jeter, U.S. Ambassador to Botswana and later to Nigeria, was born in Maple Ridge, Union County, South Carolina on March 6, 1947 to James Walter Jeter, Jr. and Emma Mattocks Jeter. Howard Jeter first attended school in a one-room schoolhouse in Maple Ridge. The school had no electricity, heat, or indoor plumbing. In high school, Jeter played the clarinet and drums in the school band and was in the drama club. Howard Jeter graduated from Sims High School in 1964 as the class valedictorian.

Jeter attended Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia where he majored in political science and minored in economics and French. At Morehouse, he received a Merrill Study Travel Fellowship through the Institute of European Studies that allowed him to study for a year at the Institute of Studies Pierre in Nantes, France. Jeter’s participation in the program encouraged his interests in a career in international relations. After earning his Bachelor’s at Morehouse in 1970, Jeter earned a Master’s in International Relations and Comparative Politics from Columbia University in New York City, New York and a Master’s in Africa Area Studies from the University of California, Los Angeles.

After joining the U.S. Foreign Service, and going through the required training including Portuguese language training, Jeter took up his first overseas assignment, a post in the U.S. Embassy in Maputo, Mozambique in 1979.  He later served in the American Embassy in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania and was Deputy Chief of Mission and Charge d’Affaires in Lesotho.  From September 1990 to July 1993, Jeter served as Deputy Chief of Mission and Charge d’Affaires at the U.S. Embassy in Windhoek, Namibia.   

In 1993 President Bill Clinton nominated Jeter to be U.S. Ambassador to Botswana. He served in the capital, Gaborone, from 1993 to 1996.  In July 1996, President Bill Clinton appointed Jeter as a special envoy to Liberia.  He returned to Washington, D.C. and served as the U.S. State Department’s Director of West African Affairs from September 1997 to June

On March 6, 1857, the Dred Scott decision of the Supreme Court denied Blacks U.S. citizenship and denied the power of Congress to restrict slavery in any federal territory.

Shaquille Rashaun O’Neal was born on March 6, 1972 in New Jersey. He is a retired NBA player, former rapper, former actor and currently, an analyst on Inside NBA. He was drafted by Orlando Magic in 1992 and was suddenly thrown into the spot light. He shined brightly, winning Rookie of the Year in 1992 – 1993 and led his team to the NBA Finals of 1995. O’Neal’s personal life has been hard. His biological father was not interested in a relationship with him and gave O’Neal’s step father parental visitation rights. Ever since then, O’Neal has made no effort to revive his relationship with his biological father and has dismissed the idea completely. O’Neal has five kids with Shaunie Nelson whom he married in 2002. However, after a couple of wavering episodes, they filed for divorce in 2009 after which O’Neal started dating a TV star.

As a kid, O’Neal played for his school team and set a record of 68 – 1 for the two years that he played. He also helped them win the state championship. He was honored as one of the 35 Greatest McDonald’s All-Americans. After graduating from school he went to Louisiana State University to study business. From there on out, he won award after award and ultimately ended up leaving LSU before finishing his degree. He was named college player of the year by AP and UPI as well as received the Adolph Rupp Trophy as basketball player of the year in 1991. Despite his fame, he held on to his promise made to his mother to earn a degree and went back to school to finish his undergraduate studies.

O’Neal, after being drafted by Orlando Magic spent majority of his time in LA. He scored an astounding average 23.4 point on 56.2% shooting during his rookie season and became Player of the Week in his first week at NBA, followed by titles such as 1993 NBA Rookie of the Year and All-Star starter (first rookie to be voted that after Michael Jordan). His second season topped his first and he improved his shooting and this ultimately led him to be drafted in the All-NBA 3rd Team. In his third season, he

Joseph, an enslaved person, was one of a handful of survivors at the Battle of the Alamo in 1836.  He was born around 1815. Known simply as Joe, he was sold four times in his life, most notably to his third master, Colonel William Barret Travis. His mother, Elizabeth, four brothers, William, Leander, Millford, Solomon, and sister, Elizabeth, were enslaved as well. Joe’s brother, William, escaped to freedom in 1833 and became the first published African American writer under the name William Wells Brown.

Born on the Mount Sterling, Kentucky, farm of Dr. John Young, Joe and his family were brought to Missouri in 1816. Young founded the town of Marthasville, Missouri, where Joe spent his childhood and adolescence as a field worker. In 1829 at the age of fourteen, Joe, his brother Millford, mother, and sister were sold to a Connecticut businessman, Isaac Mansfield. They were then brought to the bustling city of St. Louis, Missouri, where they served for several years.

Around 1830, Mansfield sold Joe’s sister whom he never saw again. After that, William, who was sold by Dr. Young to work on steamships, attempted to escape with his mother from Mansfield’s plantation. They made it far into Illinois but were captured and returned to their respective owners. Mansfield, by the winter of 1832, had decided to take Joe and his family to New Orleans, Louisiana whereupon they would travel to Texas, which was still part of Mexico.

Slavery during the 1830s was illegal in Mexican territories. However, slaves were smuggled in or kept under the guise of contracts. Joe, by this point, was technically recognized as an indentured servant for the next ten years or up until the death of Mansfield. When Joe’s master did die in 1834, Joe was not given his freedom. Instead he and his family were sold off to pay the debts of the estate. Joe never saw the rest of his family again. He then was purchased by William Barret Travis. By February of 1836, Joe had been brought to Bexar, Texas, the site of the Alamo.

On March 6, 1836, Joe, with

Independence Day, Ghana

Dr. Bernard Harleston, former dean of arts and sciences at Tufts University, appointed president of New Yorks City College.