Firsts
First black Pro Basketball team “The Renaissance” organized February 13, 1923.
The Renaissance, commonly called the Rens, become one of the dominant teams of the 1920s and 1930s.
The team’s founder was Robert L. Douglas, whose primary objective was to give New York City’s male, Black athletes opportunities to better themselves. In February 1923, Douglas struck an agreement with William Roach, a Harlem-based real estate developer who owned the New Renaissance Ballroom and Casino, and the Rens were born.
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Events
The Poor People’s Campaign, or Poor People’s March on Washington, was a 1968 effort to gain economic justice for poor people in the United States. It was organized by Martin Luther King Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), and carried out under the leadership of Ralph Abernathy in the wake of King’s assassination in April 1968.
The campaign demanded economic and human rights for poor Americans of diverse backgrounds. After presenting an organized set of demands to Congress and executive agencies, participants set up a 3,000-person protest camp on the Washington Mall, where they stayed for six weeks in the spring of 1968.
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Pioneers
Dr Lloyd A Hall , Pioneer in food chemidtry, Born Illinois, 1894
Education
On April 29, 1854, Lincoln University becomes the nation’s first historically Black degree-granting institution of higher education.
Located in Pennsylvania and originally founded as the Ashmun Institute, the university was renamed in 1866 in honor of President Abraham Lincoln, revered among African Americans for his 1863 decree to emancipate the nation’s millions of enslaved people. Founder John Miller Dickey, who was white, had long been involved in the ministry, and with the help of his wife Sarah Emlen Cressen, provided philanthropic services to African Americans in the community. Dickey made efforts to enroll a freedman, James Amos, into other schools to prepare him for ministry, but when no one would admit him due to his race, Dickey trained Amos himself.
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Inventions
Kenneth J. Dunkley discovered the existence of two points located on the periphery of a person’s vision that, if obstructed, will cause an ordinary picture to appear three-dimensional. This discovery led to the invention of the Three-Dimensional Viewing Glasses (3-DVG). The invention achieves 3-D effects without lenses, mirrors or optical elements of any kind.
Read more about Kenneth J. Dunkley on Wikipedia.