Wallace Thurman’s play Harlem begins a successful run on Broadway.

Sidney Poitier, the first African American to win an Academy Award in a starring role, is born in Miami, Florida.

Abolitionist and author Frederick Douglass dies in Washington, D.C.

In Moore vs. Dempsey decision, U.S. Supreme Court guarantees due process of law to blacks in state courts.

W.E.B. Du Bois organizes the second Pan-African Congress in Paris.

Lesbian author and feminist Audre Lorde is born in New York City.

Toni Morrison, winner of 1988 Pulitzer Prize for fiction, is born in Lorain, Ohio.

Quakers at Germantown, Pennsylvania adopt the first formal antislavery resolution in American history.

Pianist Thelonious Monk, a founding father of modern jazz, dies from a massive stroke in New Jersey.

Mary Frances Berry, first woman to serve as chancellor of a major research university (University of Colorado), is born in Nashville, Tennessee.