Clarence Thomas (left) with President George H.W. Bush. 

After a bitter confirmation hearing, the U.S. Senate voted 52 to
48 to confirm Clarence Thomas to the U.S. Supreme Court.

In July 1991, Thurgood Marshall, the first African American to
sit on the Supreme Court, announced his retirement after 34
years.

President George H.W. Bush nominated Clarence Thomas, a
43-year-old African American judge known for his conservative
beliefs, to fill the seat.

On September 17, 1983, 20-year-old Vanessa Williams became
the first Black woman to win the Miss America crown. Less
than a year later, on July 23, 1984, Williams gave up her crown
after nude photos of her surfaced.

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 four fellow crew members launched a
communications satellite for the government of India,
made contact with an errant communications satellite,
conducted scientific experiments, and tested the shuttle’s
robotic arm.

Guion Stewart Bluford Jr. will be 82 years old on
November 22.

On the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., the
African American civil rights movement reached its high-water
mark when Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his "I Have a Dream"
speech to about 250,000 people attending the March for Jobs
and Freedom.  

On August 21, 1950, officials of the United States Lawn
Tennis Association accepted Althea Gibson into their
annual championship at Forest Hills, New York, making
her the first African American player to compete in a U.S.
national tennis competition.

Althea Neale Gibson
(August 25, 1927 – September 28, 2003

Gibson survived a heart attack in 2003, but died on
September 28 that year from complications following
respiratory and bladder infections. Her body was
interred in the Rosedale Cemetery, Orange, New
Jersey, near her first husband, Will.

Statue of Gibson by Thomas Jay Warren in Newark, New
Jersey, near the courts (in background) on which she ran
clinics for young players in her later years.