By George Alexander
There are race men. And then there are race men. I’d like to think that a brother like Dr. Ivan Van Sertima, who passed away on May 25 at age 74, was the latter-the real deal.

Jack Johnson, the first Black Heavyweight Boxing Champion, died due to injuries sustained in an automobile accident in Raleigh, NC,

Marcus Garvey dies in London.

Alain LeRoy Locke, Professor of Philosophy, author, and the first Black Rhodes Scholar (1908), died in New York

Oliver W. Hill, attorney in Brown v. Board of Education, is elected to the Richmond, Virginia City Council.

James Earl Ray, alleged assassin of Martin Luther King, is captured at London Airport.

James Byrd, Jr., was brutally murdered by three white men as he walked home in Jasper, TX. He was beaten, chained to a truck, dragged three miles (dismembering him), and dumped in a black cemetery.

Homer A. Plessy refused to move to a segregated railroad coach in New Orleans, LA, initiating Plessy v. Ferguson.

Pulitzer Prize-winning poet and author Gwendolyn Brooks was born in Topeka, Kansas.