The first recorded New World slave revolt occurs in what is now South Carolina.

PFC Milton Lee Olive is awarded the Medal of Honor posthumously for bravery during the Vietnam War.

Politician George Washington Murray, Representative from South Carolina, dies in Chicago, Illinois.

Popular English vocalist Mable Mercer dies in Pittsfield, Massachusetts.

Singer Luther Vandross is born in New York City.

Harriet Elizabeth Byrd, Wyoming’s first black state legislator, is born in Cheyenne, Wyoming.

Major General Frederick E. Davidson assumed command of the Eighth Infantry Division in Germany and became the first black to lead an army.

Nana Annor Adjaye, Pan-Africanist, dies in West Nzima, Ghana.

Cheyney State College is founded as a school for boys.

Black minutemen join their white counterparts to fight the British at Concord and Lexington, Massachusetts.