Of the 116,000 African Americans in professional positions, more than two-thirds were teachers or ministers.

Jazz singer Sarah Vaughan, “the Divine One,” is born in Newark, New Jersey.

Musician Cleveland Luca, member of the famous Luca Family Quartet and composer of the Liberian national anthem dies.

William H. Lewis becomes US Assistant Attorney General.

Thomas J. Martin patents the fire extinguisher.

Hugh N. Mulzac, the first black to captain an American merchant marine ship (SS Booker T. Washington, 1942), is born in the West Indies.

Toni Cade Bambara, noted fiction writer of such works as Gorilla, My Love, is born in New York City.

Ida B. Wells-Barnett, journalist, anti-lynching activist, and founding member of the NAACP, dies in Chicago, Ilinois.

Explorer Jacob Dodson sets out in search of the Northwest Passage.

By D. Carene Bull
Some might wonder what I, a white law student, was doing eating a free lunch of collard greens, fried chicken and macaroni-and-cheese at an event held by my school’s Black Law Student Association (BLSA). The event, “From Little Rock to Barack: How Much Have We Progressed?” featured Carolotta Walls LaNier, the youngest member of the historic Little Rock Nine, pioneers who desegregated the Little Rock CentralHigh School in Arkansas, as a result of the Brown vs. Board of Education Supreme Court Decision in 1954.