SEPTEMBER

September 1, 1846 – dentist Robert Tanner Freeman was thought to be born on this date in Washington, D.C.

September 2, 1766 – abolitionist and businessman James Forten was born in Philadelphia, Province of Pennsylvania, British America

September 3, 1895 – lawyer and civil rights activist Charles Hamilton Houston was born in Washington D.C.

September 4, 1848 – engineer and inventor Lewis Howard Latimer was born in Chelsea, Massachusetts

September 4, 1908 – author Richard Nathaniel Wright was born in Roxie, Mississippi 

September 4, 1960 – comedian, actor, producer, and writer Damon Kyle Wayans Sr. was born in New York City, New York

September 4, 1981 – singer, songwriter, and businesswoman Beyoncé Giselle Knowles-Carter was born in Houston, Texas

September 5, 1939 – civil rights activist Claudette Colvin was born in Montgomery, Alabama

September 6, 1978 – rapper Inga DeCarlo Fung Marchand better known as Foxy Brown was born in Brooklyn, New York

September 7, 1930 – saxophonist Walter Theodore "Sonny" Rollins was born in New York City, New York

September 8, 1807 – architect, engineer, and bridge builder Horace King was born in Lagrange, Georgia

September 8, 1954 – civil rights activist Ruby Nell Bridges Hall was born in Tylertown, Mississippi

September 9, 1806 – educator, abolitionist, writer, and public lecturer Sarah Mapps Douglass was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

September 9, 1941 – singer and songwriter Otis Ray Redding Jr. was born in Dawson, Georgia

September 10, 1847 – writer, attorney, military officer, author, and politician John Roy Lynch was born in Vidalia, Louisiana

September 11, 1922 – civil rights activist, businessman, radio personality, and politician James Charles Evers was born in Decatur, Mississippi

September 11, 1942 – singer, dancer, and actress Lola Falana was born in Camden, New Jersey

September 12, 1913 – Olympic gold-medalist James Cleveland "Jesse" Owens was born in Oakville, Alabama

September 12, 1981 – singer and actress Jennifer Kate Hudson was born Chicago, Illinois

September 13, 1885 – writer, philosopher, and educator Alain LeRoy Locke was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

September 13, 1939 – biochemist Ida Stephens Owens was born in Whiteville, North Carolina

September 13, 1947 – military veteran and member of the Black Panther Party Elmer "Geronimo" Pratt was born in Morgan City, Louisiana

September 13, 1969 – actor, filmmaker, and playwright Tyler Perry was born in New Orleans, Louisiana

September 14, 1919 – social and civic leader Meredith Mathews was born in Thomaston, Georgia

September 14, 1921 – American jurist and politician Constance Baker Motley was born in New Haven, Connecticut

September 14, 1973 – rapper and entrepreneur Nasir bin Olu Dara Jones, better known as Nas, was born in Brooklyn, New York City

September 15, 1852 – physicist and educator Edward Alexander Bouchet was born in New Haven, Connecticut

September 15, 1898 – attorney John Edmondson Prim was born in Nashville, Tennessee

September 15, 1928 – saxophonist Julian Edwin "Cannonball" Adderley was born in Tampa, Florida

September 15, 1941 – United States diplomat and university professor Harriet Lee Elam-Thomas was born in Boston, Massachusetts

September 15, 1945 – opera singer and recitalist Jessye Norman was born in Augusta, Georgia, U.S.

September 15, 1963 – In the early morning of Sunday, September 15, 1963, several members of the United Klans of America—Thomas Edwin Blanton Jr., Robert Edward Chambliss, Bobby Frank Cherry, and, allegedly, Herman Frank Cash—planted a minimum of 15 sticks of dynamite with a time delay under the steps of the church, close to the basement. At approximately 10:22 a.m., an anonymous man phoned the 16th Street Baptist Church. The call was answered by the acting Sunday School secretary, a 15-year-old girl named Carolyn Maull. The anonymous caller simply said the words, "Three minutes", to Maull before terminating the call. Less than one minute later, the bomb exploded. Five children were in the basement at the time of the explosion, in a restroom close to the stairwell, changing into choir robes.

Four girls—Addie Mae Collins (age 14, born April 18, 1949), Carol Denise McNair (age 11, born November 17, 1951), Carole Rosamond Robertson (age 14, born April 24, 1949), and Cynthia Dionne Wesley (age 14, born April 30, 1949)—were killed in the attack. Between 14 and 22 additional people were injured in the explosion, one of whom was Addie Mae's younger sister, 12-year-old Sarah Collins. She had 21 pieces of glass embedded in her face and was blinded in one eye.

September 16, 1925 – guitarist, singer, songwriter, and record producer Riley B. King, known as B.B. King, was born near Itta Bena, Mississippi

September 16, 1950 – literary critic, professor, historian, and filmmaker Henry Louis Gates Jr. was born in Keyser, West Virginia

September 16, 1934 – NBA legend Elgin Gay Baylor was born in Washington D.C.

September 16, 1921 – lyricist and singer Jon Hendricks was born in Newark, Ohio

September 18, 1951 – neurosurgeon, academic, author, and government official Benjamin Solomon Carson Sr. was born in Detroit, Michigan

September 18, 1971 – actress, talk show host, and businesswoman Jada Koren Pinkett Smith was born in Baltimore, Maryland

September 19, 1868 – The Camilla Massacre took place in Georgia. Two months earlier, Georgia had fulfilled the requirements of Congress’s Radical Reconstruction plan and been readmitted to the Union. Yet, in early September, the state legislature expelled twenty-eight newly elected members because they were at least one-eighth Black. Among those removed was southwest Georgia representative Philip Joiner. On September 19, Joiner, along with northerners Francis F. Putney and William P. Pierce, led a twenty-five-mile march of several hundred Blacks and a few whites from Albany to Camilla, the Mitchell County seat, to attend a Republican political rally. Mitchell County whites, however, were determined that no Republican rally would occur. As marchers entered the courthouse square in Camilla, whites stationed in various storefronts opened fire, killing about a dozen and wounding possibly thirty others. As marchers returned to Albany, hostile whites assaulted them for several miles.

September 19, 1943 – baseball legend Joe Leonard Morgan was born in Bonham, Texas

September 19, 1965 – businessman and politician Timothy Eugene Scott was born in North Charleston, South Carolina

September 20, 1890 – pianist, bandleader, and composer Ferdinand Joseph LaMothe better known as Jelly Roll Morton was born in New Orleans, Louisiana

September 20, 1958 – Martin Luther King Jr. stabbed in chest by Izola Ware Curry a mentally disturbed woman while he was autographing books in a Harlem department store. She was placed under mental observation.

September 20, 1962 – Mississippi Governor Ross Barnett personally denies James Meredith admission to the University of Mississippi (Ole Miss)

September 20, 1984 – The Cosby Show premieres on NBC

September 21, 1832 – Maria W. Stewart delivers her speech “Why Sit Ye Here and Die?” to the New England Anti-Slavery Society in Boston, Massachusetts. An excerpt: 

Methinks I heard a spiritual interrogation—Who shall go forward, and take off the reproach that is cast upon the people of color? Shall it be a woman? And my heart made this reply —If it is thy will, be it even so, Lord Jesus! 

September 22, 1853 – politician and teacher George Washington Murray was born near Rembert, South Carolina

September 23, 1863 – civil rights activist, journalist, teacher and one of the first Black-American women to earn a college degree Mary Church Terrell was born in Memphis, Tennessee. 

September 22, 1906 – Atlanta Race Massacre. On the afternoon of Saturday, September 22, Atlanta newspapers reported four alleged assaults on local white women, none of which were ever substantiated. In a series of extra editions published throughout the day, the papers added lurid details and evermore inflammatory language, and soon thousands of white men and boys gathered downtown in protest. City leaders, including Mayor James G. Woodward, sought to calm the increasingly indignant crowds but failed to do so

By early evening, the crowd had become a mob; from then until after midnight, they surged down Decatur Street, Pryor Street, Central Avenue, and throughout the central business district, assaulting hundreds of Blacks. The mob attacked Black-owned businesses, smashing the windows of Black leader Alonzo Herndon’s barbershop. Although Herndon had closed down early and was already at home when his shop was damaged, another barbershop across the street was raided by the rioters—and the barbers were killed.

The crowd also attacked streetcars, entering trolley cars and assaulting Black men and women. Finally, the militia was summoned around midnight, and streetcar service was suspended. The mob showed no signs of letting up, however, and the crowd was dispersed only once a heavy rain began to fall around 2:00 a.m. Atlanta was then under the control of the state militia.

On Sunday, September 23, the Atlanta newspapers reported that the state militia had been mustered to control the mob; they also reported that Blacks were no longer a problem for whites because Saturday night’s violence had driven them off public streets. While the police, armed with rifles, and militia patrolled the streets and guarded white property, Blacks secretly obtained weapons to arm themselves against the mob, fearing its return. Despite the presence of law enforcement, white vigilante groups invaded some Black neighborhoods. In some areas African Americans defended their homes and were able to turn away the incursions into their communities. One person who described such activity was Walter White, who experienced the riot as a young boy. The incident was a defining moment for White, who went on to become secretary of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and he later described the event in his 1948 memoir A Man Called White.

On Monday, September 24, a group of African Americans held a meeting in Brownsville, a community located about two miles south of downtown Atlanta and home to the historically Black Clark College (later Clark Atlanta University) and Gammon Theological Seminary. The group was heavily armed. When Fulton County police learned of the gathering, they feared a counterattack and launched a raid on Brownsville. A shootout ensued, and an officer was killed. In response, three companies of heavily armed militia were sent to Brownsville, where they seized weapons and arrested more than 250 African American men. Meanwhile, sporadic fighting continued throughout the day.

September 23, 1911 – civil rights leader and entrepreneur Amzie Moore was born in Grenada County, Mississippi

September 23, 1926 – jazz saxophonist, bandleader and composer John William Coltrane was born in Hamlet, North Carolina

September 23, 1930 – singer, songwriter, and pianist Ray Charles Robinson was born in Albany, Georgia

September 23, 1954 – playwright George Costello Wolfe was born in Frankfort, Kentucky

September 24, 1825 – abolitionist, suffragist, poet, temperance activist, teacher, public speaker, and writer Frances Ellen Watkins Harper was born in Baltimore, Maryland

September 24, 1894 – sociologist and author Edward Franklin Frazier was born in Baltimore, Maryland

September 24, 1931 – politician Cardiss Collins was born in St. Louis, Missouri

September 24, 1954 – fashion designer Patrick Kelly was born in Vicksburg, Mississippi

September 24, 1965 – Executive Order 11246 was signed by President Lyndon B. Johnson. The executive action prohibited employment discrimination by federal contractors and subcontractors and required them to take affirmative action to prevent discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, and national origin. 

September 25, 1861 – Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles authorized the enlistment of Black American men in the Union Navy, but with significant limitations. These enlistees were restricted from reaching ranks higher than "boys" and were paid one ration per day and $10 per month

September 25, 1952 – author, theorist, educator, and social critic Gloria Jean Watkins better known as bell hooks was born in Hopkinsville, Kentucky

September 25, 1957 – The Little Rock Nine attended their first full day of classes at all-white Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, on September 25, 1957. They were escorted by the U.S. Army's 101st Airborne Division. 

September 25, 1965 – basketball legend Scottie Pippen was born in Hamburg, Arkansas

September 26, 1899 – composer, choir director, professor, and musicologist William Levi Dawson was born in Anniston, Alabama

September 26, 1929 – athlete, engineer and physicist Meredith Charles "Flash" Gourdine was born in Newark, New Jersey

September 26, 1981 – tennis legend Serena Williams was born in Saginaw, Michigan

September 26, 1864 – businesswoman and teacher Maggie Lena Walker was born in Richmond, Virginia

September 27, 1827 – politician and minister Hiram Rhodes Revels was born in Fayetteville, North Carolina

September 27, 1933 – actor Francis Gregory Alan Morris was born in Cleveland, Ohio

September 28, 1796 –  abolitionist, writer, and anti-slavery activist David Walker was born in Wilmington, North Carolina

September 28, 1868 –  Opelousas massacre. The Louisiana Constitution of 1868, ratified in April, established a bill of rights, gave Black men the right to vote, established an integrated public education system throughout the state, and gave Blacks guaranteed access to public accommodations. As a result, both state and local Republican candidates were successful in the spring elections. In July, the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution was ratified, leading to increased tensions between white supremacists and newly enfranchised Black citizens. Throughout the summer of 1868, white supremacists harassed and shot Blacks throughout the state.

18-year-old Bentley, a white man, had come to Louisiana from his native Ohio as a Freedmen's Bureau teacher, and in addition to editing the St. Landry Progress (a Republican Party newspaper) and serving as secretary of the local Republican Party, he taught Black students at a Bureau school in Opelousas. In early September, 1868, Bentley arrived to the classroom and found a note on the door. It read "E.B. Beware! K.K.K." and included drawings of a coffin, a skull and bones, and a bloody dagger.

On September 28, 1868, Bentley was instructing a class at the Freedmen's School when he was interrupted and confronted by three Seymour Knights (the local Ku Klux Klan chapter): John Williams, James R. Dickson, and Sebastian May. In front of Bentley's students, the three men beat and whipped Bentley and forced him to sign a retraction of the editorial. When the beating began, the children ran from the classroom, shouting "They are killing Mr. Bentley!", giving birth to the rumors that the teacher had been killed.

Bentley escaped but fled in secret, hiding out in Republican safe houses for several weeks before reaching New Orleans. Meanwhile, Black Republicans began organizing and threatening vengeance for the missing Bentley's "death." White supremacists, including the Knights, responded by mobilizing thousands of members.

As the massacre began, the white supremacists held a clear advantage in both numbers and weapons, and they began hunting, capturing and killing Black Republicans and white party leaders. Twenty-seven of the first Blacks captured were lynched the next day, and families were chased and shot both in public and in their homes. The white mobs destroyed the Freedmen's school and the office of the St. Landry Progress and lynched C. E. Durand, Bentley's co-editor, leaving his body displayed outside the drug store in Opelousas. Blacks who escaped were driven into the swamps and shot.

September 29, 1910 – The Nation Urban League was formed by Ruth Standish Baldwin and George Edmund Haynes

September 29, 1975 – WGPR-TV Detroit, the first Black owned TV stations begins broadcasting

September 29, 1988 – basketball great Kevin Wayne Durant was born in Washington D.C.

September 30, 1962 – Federal Marshalls escort James Meredith to class at the University of Mississippi

September 30, 1935 – singer John Royce "Johnny" Mathis was born in Gilmer, Texas