August 17
1887—Black separatist and Pan-Africanist Marcus Garvey is born on this day in St. Ann’s Bay, Jamaica. Garvey advocated Black pride and the building of Black institutions. He founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association in 1914 and with amazingly rapid speed built it into the largest independent Black organization in history with 1,100 branches in over 40 countries. He came to the U.S. in 1916 and the FBI began keeping a file on him in 1919. By 1923 he was indicted on what many considered trumped up mail fraud charges and eventually deported from his U.S. base in 1927. Garvey would die in England on June 10, 1940. But years before his death, he predicted his return, writing, “Look for me in the whirlwind or the storm, look for me all around you, with God’s grace, I shall come and bring with me countless millions…to aid you in the fight for liberty, freedom and life.”
August 18
1963—The first Black person admitted to the University of Mississippi, James Meredith, graduates on this day in 1963. His graduation was unmarred by the protests and violence which marked his federally forced entry into the once segregated institution.
1964—White-ruled South Africa is officially banned from competing in the Olympics because of its system of racial oppression known as Apartheid. The country’s Black majority would not achieve democratic rule, however, until May 1994 when the Nelson Mandela-led African National Congress won over two-thirds of the vote in the country’s first free elections.
August 19
1791—Benjamin Banneker writes a letter to Secretary of State (later president) Thomas Jefferson denouncing slavery. In his letter, Banneker declared, “I freely and cheerfully acknowledge that I am of the African race” and then precedes to label America’s recently achieved freedom from England a “hypocrisy” as long as Blacks continued to suffer under “groaning captivity and cruel oppression.” Banneker was a Black activist against slavery even though he is generally recognized for his mathematical achievements, designing one of the first clocks made in America and laying out the nation’s capital after Pierre L’Enfant abandoned the job.
1954—African-American diplomat Ralph Bunch is named Undersecretary of the United Nations. Bunch had already received the Nobel Peace Prize (1950) for his work as a UN negotiator during the Arab-Israeli war of 1948-1949. Bunch would later become UN Secretary General. He was born in Detroit but raised in Los Angeles.
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