Missionary Maria Fearing is born.

President Harry Truman orders “equality of treatment and opportunity” for all people in the armed forces by issuing Executive Order No. 9981.

By Smith Ghosh
District Court Judge revisits student assignment in Louisville… history of Virginia’s “massive resistance” to integration critically recounted… New Orleans parents discuss opposition to district’s desegregation plan… Massachusetts officials announce supportive charter school policy… Harvard researchers encourage regional charter schools to promote student integration… D.C. mayor reverses City Council decisions that would limit his control of education… New York City principal accuses charter schools of “dumping” challenged students.

By John Payton
On Thursday, July 16, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., professor and director of the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African-American Studies at Harvard University, was arrested outside of his Cambridge home for “disorderly conduct,” after several police officers confronted him for trying to open a door to his home. A neighbor had called the police when she saw Gates trying to open his front door, which was jammed shut. Gates was held for four hours then released. Here John Payton, President and Director-Counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. (LDF) shares his expert opinion.–The Editors

Writer Henry Dumas is born.

General Colin L. Powell dedicates the Buffalo Soldier Memorial at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.

The U.S. government finally admits that blacks were used as guinea pigs in the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment.

Blue singer Willie Mae Thornton dies.

Frank L. Gillespie founds the Liberty Life Insurance Company. It later merges with the Supreme Life Insurance Co., one of the largest black-owned companies in the nation.

Social activist Mary Church Terrell dies.