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AFRICAN-AMERICAN HISTORY

A Partial Timeline of Important “Firsts”

The study of African-American hardships, contributions, and spirit is something that all Americans should pursue. The following list is by no means complete, but it does cover some ground-breaking events in American history.

1770 Crispus Attucks is one of the first casualties of the American Revolution when he is shot and killed during the Boston Massacre

1783 James Denham becomes the first African-American physician in the United States, serving both black and white patients

1834 Henry Blair is the first African-American to receive a patent from the United States Patent Office

1845 Marcus B. Allen is the first African-American formally admitted to the bar after passing the state bar examination in Worcester, MA

1853 William Wells Brown is the first African-American to write and publish a novel in the United States

1862 Mary Patterson becomes the first African-American woman to earn a Master of Arts degree, awarded her by Oberlin College

1870 Hiram R. Revel of Mississippi becomes the first African-American senator

Joseph H. Rainey of South Carolina and Jefferson F. Long of Georgia become the first African-American members of the U.S. House of Representatives

1890 Thomy Gafon is the first African-American millionaire in the U.S. He was a real estate speculator and money lender

1893 Dr. Daniel Hale Williams is the first surgeon to successfully enter the chest cavity and suture the heart of a living patient

1939 Jane Matilda Bolin becomes the first African-American woman judge. She was appointed to a NYC court

1969 the Parks Sausage Company is the first African-American owned company to be publicly traded when its stock joined the NASDAQ

1975 Daniel James becomes the first African-American four-star general

1983 Guion Bluford becomes the first African-American to travel in space as he serves aboard the space shuttle Challenger

1992 Carol Moseley Braun of Illinois becomes the first African-American woman to serve in the U.S. Senate

Source: Apartment News of America 2001

Famous Firsts by African Americans

The first African-American billionaire, combat pilot, Nobel Prize winner, poet laureate, Oscar winner, and Miss America

by Borgna Brunner (found on the website infoplease)

African-American Firsts: Government

Local elected official: John Mercer Langston, 1855, town clerk of Brownhelm Township, Ohio.
State elected official: Alexander Lucius Twilight, 1836, the Vermont legislature.
Mayor of major city: Carl Stokes, Cleveland, Ohio, 1967–1971. The first black woman to serve as a mayor of a major U.S. city was Sharon Pratt Dixon Kelly, Washington, DC, 1991–1995.
Governor (appointed): P.B.S. Pinchback served as governor of Louisiana from Dec. 9, 1872–Jan. 13, 1873, during impeachment proceedings against the elected governor.
Governor (elected): L. Douglas Wilder, Virginia, 1990–1994. The only other elected black governor has been Deval Patrick, Massachusetts, 2007–
U.S. Representative: Joseph Rainey became a Congressman from South Carolina in 1870 and was reelected four more times. The first black female U.S. Representative was Shirley Chisholm, Congresswoman from New York, 1969–1983.
U.S. Senator: Hiram Revels became Senator from Mississippi from Feb. 25, 1870, to March 4, 1871, during Reconstruction. Edward Brooke became the first African-American Senator since Reconstruction, 1966–1979. Carol Mosely Braun became the first black woman Senator serving from 1992–1998 for the state of Illinois. (There have only been a total of five black senators in U.S. history: the remaining two are Blanche K. Bruce [1875–1881] and Barack Obama (2005— ).
U.S. cabinet member: Robert C. Weaver, 1966–1968, Secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development under Lyndon Johnson; the first black female cabinet minister was Patricia Harris, 1977, Secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development under Jimmy Carter.
U.S. Secretary of State: Gen. Colin Powell, 2001–2004. The first black female Secretary of State was Condoleezza Rice, 2005—.

African-American Firsts: Law

Editor, Harvard Law Review: Charles Hamilton Houston, 1919. Barack Obama became the first President of the Harvard Law Review.
Federal Judge: William Henry Hastie, 1946; Constance Baker Motley became the first black woman federal judge, 1966.
U.S. Supreme Court Justice: Thurgood Marshall, 1967–1991. Clarence Thomas became the second African American to serve on the Court in 1991.

African-American Firsts: Diplomacy

U.S. diplomat: Ebenezer D. Bassett, 1869, became minister-resident to Haiti; Patricia Harris became the first black female ambassador (1965; Luxembourg).
U.S. Representative to the UN: Andrew Young (1977–1979).
Nobel Peace Prize winner: Ralph J. Bunche received the prize in 1950 for mediating the Arab-Israeli truce. Martin Luther King, Jr., became the second African-American Peace Prize winner in 1964. (See King's Nobel acceptance speech.)

African-American Firsts: Military

Combat pilot: Georgia-born Eugene Jacques Bullard, 1917, denied entry into the U.S. Army Air Corps because of his race, served throughout World War I in the French Flying Corps. He received the Legion of Honor, France's highest honor, among many other decorations.
First Congressional Medal of Honor winner: Sgt. William H. Carney for bravery during the Civil War. He received his Congressional Medal of Honor in 1900.
General: Benjamin O. Davis, Sr., 1940–1948.
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff: Colin Powell, 1989–1993.

African-American Firsts: Science and Medicine

First patent holder: Thomas L. Jennings, 1821, for a dry-cleaning process. Sarah E. Goode, 1885, became the first African-American woman to receive a patent, for a bed that folded up into a cabinet.
M.D. degree: James McCune Smith, 1837, University of Glasgow; Rebecca Lee Crumpler became the first black woman to receive an M.D. degree. She graduated from the New England Female Medical College in 1864.
Inventor of the blood bank: Dr. Charles Drew, 1940.
Successful open heart surgery: Daniel Hale Williams, 1893.
First astronaut: Robert H. Lawrence, Jr., 1967, was the first black astronaut, but he died in a plane crash during a training flight and never made it into space. Guion Bluford, 1983, became the first black astronaut to travel in space; Mae Jemison, 1992, became the first black female astronaut. Frederick D. Gregory, 1998, was the first African-American shuttle commander.

African-American Firsts: Scholarship

College graduate (B.A.): Alexander Lucius Twilight, 1823, Middlebury College; first black woman to receive a B.A. degree: Mary Jane Patterson, 1862, Oberlin College.
Ph.D.: Edward A. Bouchet, 1876, received a Ph.D. from Yale University. In 1921, three individuals became the first U.S. black women to earn Ph.D.s: Georgiana Simpson, University of Chicago; Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander, University of Pennsylvania; and Eva Beatrice Dykes, Radcliffe College.
Rhodes Scholar: Alain L. Locke, 1907.
College president: Daniel A. Payne, 1856, Wilberforce University, Ohio.
Ivy League president: Ruth Simmons, 2001, Brown University.

See also Milestones in Black Education.

African-American Firsts: Literature

Novelist: Harriet Wilson, Our Nig (1859).
Poet: Lucy Terry, 1746, "Bar's Fight." It is her only surviving poem.
Poet (published): Phillis Wheatley, 1773, Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral. Considered the founder of African-American literature.
Pulitzer Prize winner: Gwendolyn Brooks, 1950, won the Pulitzer Prize in poetry.
Nobel Prize for Literature winner: Toni Morrison, 1993.
Poet Laureate: Robert Hayden, 1976–1978; first black woman Poet Laureate: Rita Dove, 1993–1995.

African-American Firsts: Music and Dance

Member of the New York City Opera: Todd Duncan, 1945.
Member of the Metropolitan Opera Company: Marian Anderson, 1955.
Principal dancer in a major dance company: Arthur Mitchell, 1959, New York City Ballet.

African-American Firsts: Film

First Oscar: Hattie McDaniel, 1940, supporting actress, Gone with the Wind.
Oscar, Best Actor/Actress: Sidney Poitier, 1963, Lilies of the Field; Halle Berry, 2001, Monster's Ball.
Oscar, Best Actress Nominee: Dorothy Dandridge, 1954, Carmen Jones.
Film director: Oscar Micheaux, 1919, wrote, directed, and produced The Homesteader, a feature film.
Hollywood director: Gordon Parks directed and wrote The Learning Tree for Warner Brothers in 1969.

African-American Firsts: Television

Network television show host: Nat King Cole, 1956, "The Nat King Cole Show"; Oprah Winfrey became the first black woman television host in 1986, "The Oprah Winfrey Show."
Star of a network television show: Bill Cosby, 1965, "I Spy".

African-American Firsts: Sports

Major league baseball player: Jackie Robinson, 1947, Brooklyn Dodgers.
Elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame: Jackie Robinson, 1962.
NFL quarterback: Willie Thrower, 1953.
NFL football coach: Fritz Pollard, 1922–1937.
Golf champion: Tiger Woods, 1997, won the Masters golf tournament.
NHL hockey player: Willie O'Ree, 1958, Boston Bruins.
Tennis champion: Althea Gibson became the first black person to play in and win Wimbledon and the United States national tennis championship. She won both tournaments twice, in 1957 and 1958. In all, Gibson won 56 tournaments, including five Grand Slam singles events. The first black male champion was Arthur Ashe who won the 1968 U.S. Open, the 1970 Australian Open, and the 1975 Wimbledon championship.
Heavyweight boxing champion: Jack Johnson, 1908.
Olympic medalist (Summer games): George Poage, 1904, won two bronze medals in the 200 m hurdles and 400 m hurdles.
Olympic gold medalist (Summer games): John Baxter "Doc" Taylor, 1908, won a gold medal as part of the 4 x 400 m relay team.
Olympic gold medalist (Summer games; individual): DeHart Hubbard, 1924, for the long jump; the first woman was Alice Coachman, who won the high jump in 1948.
Olympic medalist (Winter games): Debi Thomas, 1988, won the bronze in figure skating.
Olympic gold medalist (Winter games): Vonetta Flowers, 2002, bobsled.
Olympic gold medalist (Winter games; individual): Shani Davis, 2006, 1,000 m speedskating.

Other African-American Firsts

Millionaire: Madame C. J. Walker.
Billionaire: Robert Johnson, 2001, owner of Black Entertainment Television; Oprah Winfrey, 2003.
Portrayal on a postage stamp: Booker T. Washington, 1940 (and also 1956).
Miss America: Vanessa Williams, 1984, representing New York. When controversial photos surfaced and Williams resigned, Suzette Charles, the runner-up and also an African American, assumed the title. She represented New Jersey. Three additional African Americans have been Miss Americas: Debbye Turner (1990), Marjorie Vincent (1991), and Kimberly Aiken (1994).
Explorer, North Pole: Matthew A. Henson, 1909, accompanied Robert E. Peary on the first successful U.S. expedition to the North Pole.
Explorer, South Pole: George Gibbs, 1939–1941 accompanied Richard Byrd.