The NorthStar’s Week in Black History

September 27 to October 3


September 27

1827 ----- Hiram Rhodes Revels, born to free parents on this date in Fayetteville, N. C., became a passionate advocate for equal rights and also became the first black person to serve in the U. S. Congress. Revels was elected to the senate in 1869 and represented Mississippi during Reconstruction, having filled the seat left vacant by Jefferson Davis when Mississippi seceded from the Union in 1861.

Educated at Union County Quaker Seminary in Ohio, Knox College in Galesburg, Ill., and at an all-black seminary in Ohio, Revels was ordained a minister in 1845 in the African Methodist Episcopal Church. During the 1850s, Revels preached to blacks in Indiana, Illinois, Ohio, Tennessee, Missouri, Kansas and Maryland. He was imprisoned for a time in Missouri because he ministered to blacks.

Revels settled in Maryland and was appointed the first black pastor of Baltimore’s Madison Street Presbyterian Church, where he also established a school. During the Civil War, he served as a chaplain for Union soldiers. He worked to recruit black men to serve in the Union Army and helped to organize black battalions.

Following the Civil War, Revels was the pastor for congregations in Levenworth, Kan., and in New Orleans before settling with his wife and children in Nachez, Miss., where he founded another school for black children. He was elected as an alderman in Nachez in 1868, and the following year, he was elected to the Senate.

Revels’ election to the Senate was opposed vociferously by Southern Democrats, who decried his victory, citing the Dred Scott case, claiming that no black man was a citizen before the ratification of the 14th amendment to the Constitution and that election to Congress required a minimum of 9 years prior citizenship.

Revels and his supporters countered the opposition by asserting that the Dred Scott decision applied only to blacks who were of pure African blood. Revels was of mixed heritage and therefore not purely black. Their argument prevailed, and Revels was seated in the Senate, where he served from February 23, 1870 to March 3, 1871.

While in the Senate, Revels advocated for black workers who had been barred from working at the Washington Naval Yard. Amid great controversy and opposition from other blacks, he also advocated for amnesty for ex-Confederates.

Following his term in the Senate, Revels co-founded in 1872 and served as the first president of what his now Alcorn State University until 1873. From there, he was appointed Secretary of State for Mississippi, but he returned to Alcorn State, where he served as president once again. Caught in a political conflict with the school's administration while there, he left the university again, but was so respected by fellow faculty members and students, he was asked to return in 1876, and he did so.

In poor health, Revels resigned from Alcorn State in 1882, relocated to Holly Springs, Miss., where he taught and ministered until his death in 1901. Black history scholar Molefi Kete Asante included Hiram Rhodes Revels on his list, 100 Greatest African Americans.


September 28

1991 ----- The National Civil Rights Museum opened its doors for the first time in Memphis, Tenn. The museum, privately owned, is a complex of museum buildings and historic buildings, all of which are constructed around the Lorraine Motel, where Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was assassinated on April 4, 1968.

The museum complex is situated on 4.4 acres of land. Incorporated in the complex in addition to the Lorraine Motel is the Young and Morrow Building, where King’s assassin, James Earl Ray, first confessed to the killing and then later recanted his confession. Also included in the complex is Canipe’s Amusement Store, the structure next door to the rooming house where Ray’s weapon was found.

Through its exhibits, The National Civil Rights Museum traces the history of the civil rights movement from the 17th century to the present.


September 29

1908 ----- Thomas Edward “Eddie” Tolan, African-American sprinter, dubbed “the Midnight Express” by his high school track-team mates, was born on this date in Denver, Colo., and raised in Salt Lake City, Utah, and Detroit. Tolan was the first African American ever designated “the world’s fastest human being.”

A high school football star and a graduate of the University of Michigan, Tolan had not been welcomed on the university’s football team, because no black player had ever been played on the varsity team. He was, however, persuaded to join and train with the university’s track team, and Tolan accepted the invitation and the challenge, developing into one of the finest runners ever seen by the men who coached him. Though Tolan prepared for a career in teaching, it became clear that he was capable of competing successfully on the track and that he was an Olympic caliber sprinter.

The bespectacled Tolan earned two gold medals at the Los Angeles Summer Olympic Games in 1932, where he won both the 100- and the 200-yard dashes, leaving everyone behind and dazzling the spectators in the stands.

In 1935, Tolan won the 75-, 100- and 200-yard events at the World Professional Sprint Championships in Melbourne, Australia, the first man in history to win both the amateur and the professional sprint championships.

In his career as a sprinter, Tolan, who characteristically chewed gum as fast as he ran when competing, won 300 races and lost only 7 during his extraordinary athletic career.

When he stopped competing on the track, Tolan took on a wide variety of jobs, holding a position as a clerk in the Detroit office of the Register of Deeds for a considerable period. In 1956, he was finally able to secure employment as a physical education instructor in Detroit.

Tolan died of heart failure in 1967 in Detroit. He was 58. Tolan was inducted into the Michigan Sports Hall of Fame in 1958, during his lifetime. He was inducted posthumously into the University of Michigan Athletic Hall of Fame in 1980 and into the National Track and Field Hall of Fame in 1982.


September 30

1996 ----- Monetta J. Sleet, Jr., the first African-American photographer to win the Pulitzer Prize for journalism, died on this day.

Sleet, a staff photographer for Ebony magazine, won the Pulitzer Prize in Feature Photography in 1969 for his photograph of Coretta Scott King at the funeral of her husband, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., according to the African American Desk Reference, compiled and published by the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.


October 1

1890 ----- Augustus Walley, a private in Troop 1 of the 9th United States Cavalry, received the Medal of Honor on this date for his actions on August 16, 1881, during the Western Campaign of the Civil War.

Walley was cited for bravery against hostile Apaches for helping to rescue stranded soldiers under heavy fire during a battle in the Cuchillo Negro Mountains in New Mexico.


October 2

1967 ----- Thurgood Marshall, a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, is sworn in as the first African American associate justice on the U.S. Supreme Court, on this day.

Appointed by President Lyndon B. Johnson, Marshall served the Supreme Court for 24 years.  While on the court, Marshall worked consistently for civil rights, the protection of individual rights and nearly always made liberal interpretations of matters brought before the court, including Roe v Wade in 1973. Without exception, Marshall held that the death penalty was unconstitutional in all cases.

Prior to serving on the Supreme Court, Marshall was a pillar of the civil rights movement. He served for nearly 20 years as director and counsel for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund and was the principal architect of the legal strategy employed in Brown v Board of Education of Topeka in 1954.  Marshall argued the case before the Supreme Court and won.  The court's decision essentially ended segregation in America's public schools.

Justice Marshall served on the U.S. Supreme Court until 1991 when he retired due to illness. He died in 1993 at the age of 84.


October 3

1941 ----- Ernest Evans, also known as Chubby Checker, was born on this day in Spring Gulley, S.C., but was raised in Philadelphia.

In 1960, Checker released the "The Twist," which became an international hit, becoming the top single twice on the Billboard Hot 100 (see this week's video).


The NorthStar's Week in Black History is compiled and written
by Frederick H. Lowe and Susan M. Miller.