Indianapolis ABC’s defeat Chicago Giants in first Negro National League Game.

Inventor Elijah McCoy, known for his many U.S. patents, is born in Ontario, Canada.

Thomas Blanton is sentenced to life in prison for the murders in the 16th Street Church bombing in Birmingham, Alabama.

Author and former Black Panther Party member Eldridge Cleaver dies in Pomona, California.

Gwendolyn Brooks becomes the first African American to win the Pulitzer Prize, for her book of poetry Annie Allen.

Poet, literary critic, and editor Sterling Brown is born in Washington, D.C.

By Smita Ghosh
Roanoke, VA, ends 1971 busing program… Madison County, MS, phases out minority transfer program… Little Rock, AR is released from federal desegregation order… Houston, TX responds to lawsuit by ending opportunity programs for women-owned businesses… John McWhorter, Julian Bond and others discuss class- and race- based affirmative action programs… Arne Duncan and Walter Issacson encourage federal accountability initiatives… Sacramento area schools segregate assemblies… Colin Powell’s organization publishes report on urban-suburban graduation gap.

By TaRessa Stovall
Sojourner Truth, the former slave-turned abolitionist and early women’s rights crusader, made history on Tuesday, April 28, 2009, when she became the first African-American woman to have a memorial in the U.S. Capitol.

By Jewell Parker Rhodes
I scheduled a visit to New Orleans without realizing that it was Easter Week: the holiday symbolic of Spring, renewal of faith, the dead restored to life. Surely three years after the levees broke, the city would be revitalized, reborn.

By: Herndon L. Davis
The nation’s capital is in the midst of an enormous and rapidly growing healthcare epidemic: 3 percent of its population is living with HIV/AIDS and 76.3 percent of these people are black.  Even worse, the numbers are likely to be severely undercounted as the race to identify more residents who unknowingly are HIV positive or have full-blown AIDS continues.