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Topics Related to African American History
On February 9, 1956, basketball legend Phil Ford was born in Kannapolis.Ford was raised in Rocky Mount, where he graduated from high school in 1974.As a point guard at UNC-Chapel Hill, he led the basketball team to four NCAA tournaments. Ford’s accolades during his college career were many. In 1978, he capped off his senior year by winning the coveted John R. Wooden Award, given annually to the country’s most outstanding college basketball player.He graduated that year with a degree in business administration.
On February 8, 1898, Warren Coleman and his associates laid the cornerstone for the nation’s first black-owned cotton mill in Concord.Congressman George H. White, himself a civil rights pioneer, was the main speaker at the event. The company represented the first major cooperative effort by North Carolina’s African American businessmen.
On February 6, 1971, Mike’s Grocery, a mom-and-pop store in Wilmington, was firebombed and burned. It’s unclear who was responsible for the arson, which came after a week of increasing racial tension and violence over the desegregation of the city’s high schools.
On February 1, 1960, four African American college students sat down at the lunch counter at Woolworth’s Department Store in downtown Greensboro and asked to be served. They were refused, launching a sit-in movement that would spread throughout North Carolina and the South.The four students, Ezell Blair, Jr. (later known as Jibreel Khazan), Franklin E. McCain, Joseph A. McNeil and David L. Richmond, were all freshmen from nearby North Carolina A&T State University.
On January 25, 1946, noted educator Orishatukeh Faduma died.Born in the South American country of Guyana to freed slaves from West Africa, Faduma settled in Sierra Leone while he was still in elementary school. Educated there by missionaries, Faduma was baptized with the name William James Davies.
Title page of the journal of the 1868 convention.On January 14, 1868, a North Carolina constitutional convention, now known as the “Convention of 1868,” opened in Raleigh.
St. Augustine’s College in 1900. Image from the Prezell R. Robinson Library.
A circa 1946-1948 portrait of Smith fromthe Library of Congress.
Charlotte Hawkins Brown on her wedding day in 1911.
On January 10, 1924, popular jazz drummer Max Roach was born in Pasquotank County. Shortly after moving to New York City with his family in 1928, Roach began to study piano with his aunt. He showed an early aptitude for music and played in jazz bands throughout high school.