MARCH

March 1, 1841 – Blanche Kelso Bruce was born in Prince Edward County, Virginia. Bruce would become the first black person to serve a full term in the U.S. Senate

March 1, 1843 – Union soldier and Medal of Honor recipient Robert Alexander Pinn  was born in Perry Township, Ohio

March 1, 1914 – writer Ralph Ellison was born in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma

March 1, 1924 – singer, actor, and civil rights activist Harry Belafonte was born in Harlem, New York

March 1, 1933 – civil rights activist Myrlie Evers-Williams was born in Vicksburg, Mississippi

March 2, 1955 – On March 2, 1955, Claudette Colvin was on a Capital Heights bus, making her way back home from school. Buses were segregated at the time, so she sat in the black section of the bus at the back. The norm was for whites and blacks to sit in their respective sections, but if the bus became too crowded, blacks were asked to vacate their seats if any white people were left standing. Such was the case on that day, when Colvin was returning home. The bus driver ordered Colvin and three other women to vacate their seats. Three of the women moved but another woman, by the name of Ruth Hamilton, got up and sat next to Colvin. She was pregnant and she kept saying that she didn’t feel like standing, and as she had paid her fare, she had as much right to the seat as the white woman. Colvin said the same but the bus driver threatened to call the police. When both women still refused to move, two policemen came to the scene and rearranged some seats so that Mrs. Hamilton could be seated. Colvin, however, continued to refuse so she was taken into custody. She was charged with disturbing the peace, as well as assault and violating the segregation law.  After her arrest, Claudette Colvin was one of the plaintiffs of the historic court case Browder v. Gayle, which determined that segregation was illegal. The district court’s decision was appealed to the Supreme Court, which upheld the original ruling. The verdict of this case was a historic step for African Americans, as it officially led to the end of segregation and the signing of the 14th amendment.

March 3, 1820 – the Missouri Compromise was enacted. This legislation admitted Missouri as a slave state and Maine as a non-slave state at the same time, so as not to upset the balance between slave and free states in the nation. It also outlawed slavery above the 36º 30' latitude line in the remainder of the Louisiana Territory.  In 1857, the Supreme Court ruled that the Missouri Compromise was unconstitutional in its Dred Scott v. Sandford decision.

March 3, 1819 – minister and academic Alexander Crummell was born in New York City, New York, U.S.

March 3, 1821 – abolitionist Thomas L. Jennings was the first African-American to have patented an invention. Jennings was issued a patent for a dry-cleaning process known as "dry scouring."

March 3, 1836 – Jefferson Franklin Long was born in Knoxville, Georgia

March 3, 1865 – the Freedman's Bureau was established by Congress.  The bureau was designed to protect the interests of former slaves. This included helping them to find new employment and to improve educational and health facilities. In the year that followed the bureau spent $17,000,000 establishing 4,000 schools, 100 hospitals and providing homes and food for former slaves.

March 3, 1852 – bibliographer, author, politician, and historian Daniel Alexander Payne Murray was born in Baltimore, Maryland

March 4, 1877 – scientist and inventor Garrett A. Morgan was born in Paris, Kentucky

March 6, 1857 – In its 1857 decision in the Dred Scott v Sanford case the United States Supreme Court upheld slavery in United States territories, denied the legality of black citizenship in America, and declared the Missouri Compromise to be unconstitutional. From Chief Justice Roger B. Taney opinion in the case:

In the opinion of the court, the legislation and histories of the times, and the language used in the Declaration of Independence, show, that neither the class of persons who had been imported as slaves, nor their descendants, whether they had become free or not, were then acknowledged as a part of the people, nor intended to be included in the general words used in that memorable instrument.

It is difficult at this day to realize the state of public opinion in relation to that unfortunate race, which prevailed in the civilized and enlightened portions of the world at the time of the Declaration of Independence, and when the Constitution of the United States was framed and adopted. But the public history of every European nation displays it in a manner too plain to be mistaken.

They [blacks] had for more than a century before been regarded as beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race, either in social or political relations; and so far inferior, that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect; and that the negro might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for his benefit.

March 7, 1927 – Supreme Court decision in Nixon v. Herndon struck down Texas law which barred Blacks from voting in "white primary."

March 7, 1965 – an estimated 600 civil rights marchers headed southeast out of Selma on U.S. Highway 80. The march was led by John Lewis of SNCC and the Reverend Hosea Williams of SCLC. The protest went according to plan until the marchers crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge, where they encountered a wall of state troopers and county posse waiting for them on the other side.

County sheriff Jim Clark had issued an order for all white men in Dallas County over the age of twenty-one to report to the courthouse that morning to be deputized. Commanding officer John Cloud told the demonstrators to disband at once and go home. Rev. Hosea Williams tried to speak to the officer, but Cloud curtly informed him there was nothing to discuss. Seconds later, the troopers began shoving the demonstrators, knocking many to the ground and beating them with nightsticks. Another detachment of troopers fired tear gas, and mounted troopers charged the crowd on horseback.

Televised images of the brutal attack presented Americans and international audiences with horrifying images of marchers left bloodied and severely injured, and roused support for the Selma Voting Rights Campaign. Amelia Boynton, who had helped organize the march as well as marching in it, was beaten unconscious. A photograph of her lying on the road of the Edmund Pettus Bridge appeared on the front page of newspapers and news magazines around the world.

March 8, 1825 – surgeon, educator, and Civil War veteran Alexander Thomas Augusta was born in Norfolk, Virginia

March 9, 1922 – civil rights activist Floyd McKissick Sr. was born in Asheville, North Carolina

March 10, 1913 – abolitionist and American legend Harriet Tubman died in Auburn, New York at the age of 90 or 91

March 11, 1926 – minister and civil rights activist Ralph Abernathy was born in Linden, Alabama

March 12, 1773 – Jean Baptiste Point du Sable an explorer of African descent, establish a permanent settlement on the shore of Lake Michigan. This settlement is now modern day Chicago

March 12, 1791 – Benjamin Banneker and Pierre Charles L'Enfant were commissioned to lay out the District of Columbia

March 12, 1964 – Malcolm X resigned from the Nation of Islam

March 15, 1842 – politician and civil rights activist Robert C. De Large was born in Aiken, South Carolina

March 17, 1806 – chemist and inventor Norbert Rillieux was born in New Orleans, Louisiana

March 17, 1825 – politician and civil rights activist Benjamin Sterling Turner was born in Weldon, North Carolina

March 17, 1919 – Jazz pianist and singer Nat "King" Cole was born in Montgomery, Alabama

March 18, 1972 – USS Jesse L. Brown, the first naval vessel named for a black-American is launched

March 19, 1619 – William Tucker, the first child of African descent born in the colonies, was baptized in Jamestown, Virginia.  He reportedly lived to the age of 108 years old.

March 20, 1852 – Uncle Tom's Cabin published in Boston, Massachusetts 

March 20, 1915 – gospel singer and songwriter Sister Rosetta Tharpe was born in Cotton Plant, Arkansas

March 21, 1856 – engineer Henry O. Flipper was born in Thomasville, Georgia. Flipper was the first black American to graduate from the United States Military Academy at West Point, earning a commission as a second lieutenant in the United States Army.

March 24, 1912 – civil rights activist Dr. Dorothy Height was born in Richmond, Virginia

March 25, 1931 – The Scottsboro Boys, nine young African Americans, were falsely charged with rape and collectively served more than 100 years in prison. two dozen people were "hoboing" on a freight train traveling between Chattanooga and Memphis, Tennessee. The hoboes were an equal mix of blacks and whites. A group of white teenage boys saw 18-year-old Haywood Patterson on the train and attempted to push him off, claiming that it was "a white man's train".  A group of whites then gathered rocks and attempted to force all the black teenagers from the train. Patterson and the other black teenagers were able to ward off the group. The humiliated white teenagers jumped or were forced off the train and reported to a nearby train master that they had been attacked by a group of black teenage boys. Shortly thereafter, the police stopped and searched the train at Paint Rock, Alabama and arrested the black teenage boys. Two young white women were also taken to the jail, where they accused the African American teenage boys of rape. The case was first heard in Scottsboro, Alabama, in three rushed trials, in which the defendants received poor legal representation. All but 13-year-old Roy Wright were convicted of rape and sentenced to death (the common sentence in Alabama at the time for black men convicted of raping white women), even though there was no medical evidence indicating that rape had taken place.

March 25, 1942 – singer, songwriter, and civil rights activist Aretha Franklin was born in Memphis, Tennessee

March 26, 1944 – singer and actress Diana Ross was born in Detroit, Michigan

March 27, 1924 – jazz singer Sarah Vaughan was born in Newark, New Jersey

March 29, 1849 – Henry "Box" Brown shipped himself in a box from Richmond, Virginia to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to escape slavery

March 29, 1918 – singer Pearl Bailey was born in Newport News, Virginia

March 31, 1870 – Thomas Mundy Petersen of Perth Amboy, New Jersey was believed to be the first black person to vote as a result of the ratification of the 15th amendment.

March 31, 1878 – boxer Jack Johnson was born in Galveston, Texas