“Good morning, young people. Welcome to the first day of a new school year, and welcome to your freshman year of high school. Everyone here calls me Ms. P., …

Gilliam waited patiently in the restaurant for Jalinda to show up. It was his first face-to-face meeting of his first try with online dating, and Jalinda wasn’t like the women he’d dated before. When he had stumbled across her profile, he was drawn in by the fact that they had…

Elias Prescott. Starting at the age of fourteen, that’s how he introduced himself to everyone, even though his full name was Elias Prescott the Fourth. Everyone knew of his prominent family in their small town, and they knew he was the fourth Elias in the Prescott lineage. They continued to…

Bayard Rustin (1914–1987) helped found the Congress on Racial Equality (CORE), was a major organizer of the Montgomery Bus Boycott of 1955, was involved in the formation of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), and coordinated the 1963 March on Washington; right down to the number and position of portable…

1811 | Believed to be the largest slave revolt in American history, 500 slaves led by Charles Deslonde marched on New Orleans. 1836 | Fannie M. Jackson, the first black woman college graduate, was born. 1867 | Congress granted black men the right to vote in Washington, DC, even though…

Starting in 1985, Michael J. Fox netted a boon for his performances in the Back to the Future movies. If you recall, the premise of the movies was a man who had to go back to the past and make sure events played out so that he could exist in…

1822 | Liberia was founded by free blacks from America. 1837 | Philip A. Bell founded The Weekly Advocate in New York; the second, major African-American newspaper in America. 1840 | Africans, including Joseph Cinque, from the slave ship, Amistad, were tried for mutiny and murder in Haven, CT. …

1773 | Slaves in Massachusetts petitioned the legislature for their freedom. They were not successful. 1804 | The “Black Laws” were enacted by the Ohio legislature to legally restrict the rights of free blacks in that state. 1820 | The American Colonization Society launched its first ship that took 86…