Blues musician Muddy Waters dies in Westmont, Illinois.

Surgeons Rivers Frederick, Ulysses G. Dailey, and Nelson M. Russell are honored by the International College of Surgeons.

Bessie Coleman, the first black aviator, and the first American of any race or gender to hold an international pilot license, dies in Jacksonville, Florida.

Jazz legend Duke Ellington is born in Washington, D.C.

Singer Tammi Terrell is born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Four Los Angeles police officers are acquitted of charges stemming from the beating of Rodney King; rioting ensues.

Ashmun Institute (later Lincoln University), the world’s first higher education institution founded for blacks, opens in Oxford, Pennsylvania.

Writer Ann Petry, first black woman with book sales topping a million copies for her novel The Street, dies in Old Saybrook, Connecticut.

Chicago lawyer W. Robert Ming is elected chairman of the American Veterans Committee, becoming the first black to head a major national veterans organization.

Political activist Margaret Just Butcher is born in Washington, D.C..