On December 6, 1961, Syracuse running back Ernie Davis
became the first Black player to win the Heisman Trophy—
college football’s top individual award—beating Ohio State
fullback Bob Ferguson.

Earlier in day, Davis met with President John Kennedy at
the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York. "I never thought
I’d ever be shaking the hand of the President of the United
States," he says.

As a senior in 1961, Davis rushed for 823 yards and scored 14 touchdowns. The previous season, he rushed for 877 yards.

Davis was the first pick in the 1962 NFL draft, by Washington,
which traded him to the Cleveland Browns. But he never
played in the NFL. Davis was diagnosed with leukemia later
in 1962, and died on May 18, 1963. He was 23.

Ernie Davis Statue, Syracuse University.

 
CARLATA BRADLEY

Chief Justice Earl Warren swore in Thurgood Marshall, the first
Black justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. As chief counsel for
the National Association for the Advancement of Colored
People in the 1940s and ’50s.

Marshall was the architect and executor of the legal strategy
that ended the era of official racial segregation.

Thoroughgood "Thurgood" Marshall
(July 2, 1908 – January 24, 1993)

U.S. Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Guion S. Bluford became
the first African American to travel into space when the space
shuttle Challenger lifted off on its third mission.

It was the first night launch of a space shuttle, and many people
stayed up late to watch the spacecraft roar up from Cape
Canaveral, Florida, at 2:32 a.m.

The Challenger spent six days in space, during which time
Bluford and his crew members launched a communications
satellite for the government of India, made contact with an
errant communications satellite, conducted various scientific experiments, and tested the shuttle’s robotic arm.

Guion Stewart Bluford Jr. (82)

On or about August 20, 1619, “20 and odd” Angolans, kidnapped
by the Portuguese, arrived in the British colony of Virginia and 
were then bought by English colonists.

The exact date is not definitively known (a letter from the time
identified the ship’s arrival coming in "the latter part of August"),
but this date has been chosen by many to mark the arrival of the enslaved Africans in the New World—beginning two and a half
centuries of slavery in North America.