This Week In Black History June 18-24, 2025

• JUNE 18

1941—Labor and civil rights leader A. Phillip Randolph initially rejects a plea by President Franklin D. Roosevelt to call off the first-ever Black-organized March on Washington designed to pro­test unfair employment practices by the military and the defense industry. The march was planned by Randolph, Bayard Rustin and A.J. Muste—all rela­tively unsung heroes of the early civil rights movement. The march was not cancelled until Roosevelt signed the Fair Employment Act. Ironically, more than 20 years later, Randolph would be one of the principal figures helping Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. organize his historic 1963 March on Washington.

1968—The United States Supreme Court bans racial discrimination in the sale and rental of housing. The deci­sion came in a case known as Jones v. Alfred H. Mayer Co. The court used as its precedent the Civil Rights Act of 1866 to state that housing discrimina­tion by either the government or pri­vate industry was unconstitutional.

2010—A study gains widespread publicity indicating that a growing number of Black males are abandon­ing Black females when it comes to marriage. The report, analyzing data from 2008, found that 22 percent of Black male newlyweds married a wom­an who was not Black. Meanwhile, 9 percent of Black female newlyweds married a man who was not Black. The study was compiled the Pew research Center and based on data from the Census Bureau’s “American Communi­ty Survey.” The actual report had been released in early June.

• JUNE 19

1865—The Celebration begins. June 19, 1865 marks the day that many Blacks actually became free, especially those in Texas. Even though the Emancipation Proclamation tech­nically freed all slaves in 1863, slavery actually continued in Texas until the end of the Civil War. It was not until June 19, 1865 that many slaves learned they had been freed. They called the day of freedom “Juneteenth.” It is nor­mally marked with picnics, barbecues and commemorations. In 1980, the day became an official holiday in Texas.

1918—Ebony and Jet magazines founder John H. Johnson is born in Arkansas City, Ark. He moved to Chi­cago to build his publishing empire. Johnson was the first African-American to appear on the Forbes magazine list of 400 richest Americans with an esti­mated wealth of $500 million. Johnson died in August 2005. However, both magazines are now in financial trouble.

2009—The U.S. Congress issues a formal apology to Black Americans for the slavery of their ancestors. The resolution acknowledged the “funda­mental injustice, cruelty, brutality and inhumanity of slavery and Jim Crow laws” which followed slavery. However, the resolution specifically rejected paying Blacks reparations for past, discrimina­tion, mistreatment and brutality.

• JUNE 20

1871—The first anti-Ku Klux Klan trials begin in Oxford, Miss. The trials were part of an effort begun by President Ul­ysses S. Grant to crush the Klan, which was populated by defeated Confed­erate soldiers from the Civil War and which was becoming increasingly powerful throughout the South. In Mis­sissippi, White doctors, lawyers and even ministers were indicted for violat­ing Black rights and conspiring against the U.S. government. More than 900 were indicted in Mississippi and 243 convicted. Similar trials took place throughout the South—most notably in South Carolina and North Carolina. Grant’s efforts succeeded in crushing the terrorist organization and it would not rise again until 1915.

• JUNE 21

1832—Joseph Haynes Rainey, the first African American to serve in the United States House of Representa­tives, is born in Georgetown, S.C. He was elected in 1870 from the state of South Carolina. He served five terms in Congress and died in 1887. In 2005, a portrait of Rainey was finally hung in the U.S. Capitol Building.

1859—Henry O. Tanner, the first Afri­can American painter to achieve inter­national acclaim, is born in Pittsburgh, Pa, to a middle class Black family. His most notable work was “The Banjo Les­son,” which he painted in 1893. Tanner would later teach at Clark University in Atlanta, Ga. Tanner was considered a formalist—meaning his paintings tend­ed to be beautiful depictions of reality. He died in May 1937.

This undated handout image provided by the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African Art and part of the William H. and Camille O. Cosby Collection, shows an oil on canvas work by Henry Ossawa Tanner, entitled The Thankful Poor. (AP Photo/Smithsonian Institution)

1915—The United States Supreme Court declares in the Guinn v. United States case that “grandfather claus­es” in many Southern state constitu­tions and laws were illegal. The case grew out of the practice, common in the South, of setting up stringent re­quirements in order to prevent Blacks (former slaves) from voting. But in or­der to ensure that Whites could vote, the laws exempted them from the dif­ficult requirements by asserting that anyone (or his grandfather) who could vote prior to 1867 did not have to meet the tough standards. Since virtually no Blacks could vote prior to 1867, “grand­father clauses” had the effect of deny­ing Blacks the right to vote.

Civil Rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King displays pictures of three civil rights workers at news conference on Dec. 4, 1964 in New York City. The workers were slain in Mississippi last summer.  (AP Photo/ John Lindsay)

1964—Three civil rights workers (Andrew Goodman, James Chaney and Michael Schwerner) disappear near Philadelphia, Miss., and are later found murdered. Seven Ku Klux Klan members, opposed to a Black voting rights campaign, were indicted for the killings, but none served more than six years in prison. The incident be­came one of the major sparks to the then young Civil Rights Movement. Justice for the three was finally com­pleted in June 2005 when the leader of the group of Klansmen—Edgar Ray “The Preacher” Killen—was convicted of their murders. Ironically, Killen was convicted on June 21, 2005—41 years to the day that Goodman, Chaney and Schwerner were killed.

• JUNE 22

1863—The War Department estab­lishes the Bureau of Colored Troops and began to aggressively recruit Blacks for the Civil War. The Black troops would play a major role in turn­ing the tide of battle against the rebel­lious Southern slave states.

1959—Benjamin O. Davis Jr. be­comes the first African American gen­eral in the U.S. Air Force. His father, Benjamin O. Davis Sr., had been the first Black general in the U.S. Army.

• JUNE 23

NOBLE SISSLE and EUBIE BLAKE

1921—“Shuffle Along”—the first of a succession of widely popular Black musicals performed for White audienc­es—opened at the 63rd Street Theatre in New York City, becoming the first Af­rican American Broadway musical. The musical comedy combined the talents of the legendary team of Eubie Blake and Noble Sissle. “Shuffle Along” produced a long list of hits including “Shuffle Along,” “I’m Just Wild about Harry,” “Gypsy Blues” and “Love Will Find A Way.”

1981—Legendary Reggae artist Bob Marley is given an official state fu­neral in his homeland of Jamaica. He had died of cancer on May 11 in Miami. Marley and his band “The Wailers” had made Reggae popular worldwide with such hits as “Stir It Up” and “No Wom­an, No Cry.” He was considered the first third-world superstar and a proph­et of the Rastafarian religion. He was only 36 when he died. His body now lies in a mausoleum in Jamaica.

• JUNE 24

1854—Anthony Burns, one of the most celebrated fugitive slaves in American history, is captured by dep­uty U.S. Marshals in Boston. But at the time anti-slavery feeling was running high in Boston and it was one of the cities which had vowed not to obey the Fugitive Slave Act—a federal law that required even those opposed to slavery to help slave owners capture run-away slaves. For fear that Bos­ton residents would help Burns es­cape to Canada, the U.S. government sent 2,000 troops to Boston to assist in returning Burns to Virginia. Thou­sands lined the streets as Burns was marched to a ship on June 3 for a trip back South. However, a Black Boston church raised the money to purchase Burns and within a year of his capture, he was back in Boston a free man.

1856—The so-called Pottawatomie Massacre takes place. A force of men led by famed abolitionist John Brown attacks a pro-slavery settlement in Franklin County, Kan., leaving at least five men dead. The attack was part of a period known as “Bleeding Kan­sas” when pro and anti-slavery forces battled one another in a bid to deter­mine whether Kansas would be a slave or free territory. The “Pottawatomie Massacre” was also one of the events which made the Civil War unavoidable.

PATTI LaBELLE

1944—Legendary singer Patti La­Belle is born Patricia Louise Holte in Philadelphia, Pa.