JULY

July 1, 1893 – civil rights activist Walter Francis White was born in Atlanta, Georgia

July 1, 1899 – musician, composer, evangelist and the Father of Gospel Music, Thomas Dorsey was born in Villa Rica, GA

July 1, 1961 – Olympic gold-medalist Carl Lewis was born in Birmingham, Alabama

July 2, 1908 – the first black U.S. Supreme Court justice Thurgood Marshall was born in Baltimore, Maryland

July 2, 1925 – Civil Rights activist Medgar Wylie Evers was born in Decatur, Mississippi

July 2, 1935 – playwright Edward Artie Bullins was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

July 4, 1844 – sculptor Mary Edmonia "Wildfire" Lewis was born in Rensselaer County, New York

July 4, 1881 – Tuskegee Institute was established by Booker T. Washington 

July 5, 1852 – Frederick Douglass was invited to speak at a celebration of the signing of the Declaration of Independence in Rochester, New York. He delivered his famous speech "What, To The Slave, Is The Fourth of July?" Here is an excerpt:

What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer; a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciation of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are, to Him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy—a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of the United States, at this very hour.

July 6, 1930 – historian and educator Arvarh E. Strickland was born in Hattiesburg, Mississippi

July 6, 1931 – singer, actress, television personality, author and minister Della Reese was born in Detroit, Michigan

July 7, 1915 – poet and writer Margaret Walker was born in Birmingham, Alabama

July 7, 1972 – basketball legend Lisa Leslie was born in Gardenia, California

July 7, 1906 – baseball legend Leroy Robert "Satchel" Paige was born in Mobile, Alabama

July 9, 1868 – the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution was ratified. 

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

July 9, 1936 – writer, editor, poet, educator, environmental and social activist June Meyer Jordan was born in Harlem, New York

July 10, 1875 – educator, philanthropist, humanitarian, womanist, and civil rights activist Mary Jane McLeod Bethune was born in Mayesville, South Carolina

July 10, 1927 – politician David Norman Dinkins was born in Trenton, New Jersey

July 10, 1943 – tennis legend Arthur Robert Ashe Jr. was born in Richmond, Virginia

July 11, 1925 – opera singer Mattiwilda Dobbs was born in Atlanta, Georgia

July 12, 1887 – Mound Bayou, an all African American town in Mississippi is founded by Isaiah Montgomery

July 13, 1863 – Working class Irish in New York City, angered by the Conscription Act that allowed exemptions from military service for $300, burned a provost marshal's office and the Colored Orphan Asylum. The act triggered a three-day anti-black race riot.

July 13, 1936 – saxophonist, singer, and composer Albert Ayler was born in Cleveland, Ohio

July 16, 1862 – journalist, anti-lynching activist, civil rights activist, and women's right advocate Ida Bell Wells was born in Holly Springs, Mississippi

July 16, 1968 – NFL legend Barry Sanders was born in Wichita, Kansas

July 17, 2014 – Eric Garner was killed in Staten Island, New York, after a New York City Police Department (NYPD) officer put him in a chokehold

July 19, 1875 – poet, journalist, and political activist Alice Dunbar Nelson was born in New Orleans, Louisiana

July 21, 1818 – mathematician, linguist, and educator Charles Lewis Reason was born in New York City, New York

July 21, 1840 – Medal of Honor recipient Christian Abram Fleetwood was born in Baltimore, Maryland. His medal citation reads:

The President presented Sergeant Major Fleetwood the Medal of Honor because of his fearlessness during the Chapin's Farm, Virginia battle among his men in the 4th U.S. Colored Infantry. Fleetwood had seized the two Color Bearer's colors after they were shot down. He wore them honorably throughout the rest of the fight.

July 22, 1940 – singer, songwriter, record producer, and bandleader George Edward Clinton was born in Kannapolis, North Carolina

July 22, 1946 – actor and film producer Danny Glover was born San Francisco, California

July 23, 1840 – politician John Adams Hyman was born near Warrenton, North Carolina

July 23, 1891 – surgeon and civil rights activist Louis Tompkins Wright was born in LaGrange, Georgia

July 24, 1893 – sociologist Charles Spurgeon Johnson was born in Bristol, Virginia

July 24, 1964 – baseball legend Barry Lamar Bonds was in Riverside, California

July 25, 1941 – Emmett Louis Till was born in Chicago, Illinois

July 25, 1946 – During the late afternoon four Black-Americans were shot dead by a lynch mob at Moore's Ford, Walton county, Georgia, about eight miles from the town of Monroe. "The grotesquely sprawled bodies of the victims--the Coroner said at least sixty bullets were pumped into them--were found in a clump of bushes beside a little used side road...The uper parts of the bodies were scarcely recognizable from the mass of bullet holes." 

The victims were two married couples: Roger Malcom, aged 24, Dorothy Malcom, aged 20, George Dorsey, a World War II veteran, aged 28, and Mae Murray Dorsey, aged 23.

July 25, 1953 – NFL legend Walter Payton was born in Columbia, Missouri

July 29, 1909 – writer Chester Bomar Himes was born in Jefferson City, Missouri

July 30, 1868 – The New Orleans massacre of 1866 occurred when a peaceful demonstration of mostly Black Freedmen was set upon by a mob of white rioters, many of whom had been soldiers of the recently defeated Confederate States of America, leading to a full-scale massacre.

July 30, 1936 – guitarist and singer George "Buddy" Guy was born in Lettsworth, Louisiana

July 30, 1961 – actor, writer, director, and producer Laurence Fishburne was born in Augusta, Georgia

July 31, 1962 – actor Wesley Trent Snipes was born in Orlando, Florida