The first organized immigration of freed slaves to Africa from the
United States departs New York harbor on a journey to Freetown,
Sierra Leone, in West Africa.

The first organized immigration of freed slaves to Africa from the United
States departed New York harbor on a journey to Freetown, Sierra Leone,
in West Africa. The immigration was largely the work of the American
Colonization Society, a U.S. organization founded in 1816 by Robert
Finley to return freed American slaves to Africa. However, the expedition
was also partially funded by the U.S. Congress, which in 1819 had
appropriated $100,000 to be used in returning displaced Africans,
illegally brought to the United States after the abolishment of the slave
trade in 1808, to Africa.

The program was modeled after British’s efforts to resettle freed slaves
in Africa following England’s abolishment of the slave trade in 1772.

Martin Luther King Jr. (January 15, 1929 – April 4, 1968)

On January 15, 1929, Martin Luther King, Jr. is born in Atlanta, Georgia,
the son of a Baptist minister. King received a doctorate degree in theology
and in 1955 helped organized the first protest of the African-American civil
rights movement: the successful Montgomery Bus Boycott. Influenced by Mohandas Gandhi, he advocated civil disobedience and nonviolent
resistance to segregation in the South. The peaceful protests he led
throughout the American South were often met with violence, but King
and his followers persisted, and the movement gained momentum.

A powerful orator, King appealed to Christian and American ideals and
won growing support from the federal government and Northern whites.

In 1963, Bayard Rustin and A. Philip Randolph led the massive March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom; the event’s grand finale was King’s 
famous “I Have a Dream” speech. Two hundred and fifty thousand people
gathered outside the Lincoln Memorial to hear the stirring speech. 

   
    
  
          ROSS SIMPSON
   

Marilyn Monroe and Joe DiMaggio were married on this day in
1954. The marriage only lasted nine months.

Lawrence Douglas Wilder will be 89 on January 17.           

Douglas Wilder, the first African American to be elected
governor of an American state, took office as Governor
of Virginia on January 13, 1990.He broke a number of
color barriers in Virginia politics and remains an enduring
and controversial figure in the state’s political scene.

Born in 1931 in Church Hill, a poor and segregated
neighborhood of Richmond, Wilder is the grandson of
slaves and is named for Frederick Douglass. He grew
up in the Jim Crow era, graduating from Richmond’s
Virginia Union University in 1951. Wilder fought in the
Korean War, earning the Bronze Star, before studying
law at Howard University and returning to Richmond to
practice.

Wilder entered politics by way of a special election to the
State Senate in 1969, becoming the state’s first African
American state senator since Reconstruction.

 
This 1867 drawing by Alfred Waud, “The First Vote,” depicts Black
men waiting in line to cast ballots in Southern states.

On January 8, 1867, African American men gained the right to vote in the
District of Columbia despite the veto of President Andrew Johnson. The
Republican-controlled senate overrode Johnson by a vote of 29-10
three years before a constitutional amendment granted the right to
vote to all men regardless of race.

As evidenced by his veto, Johnson valued reconciliation with the former Confederacy over racial equality and also opposed the Fourteenth
Amendment, which made freed slaves citizens. His opposition to 
the Republicans’ views on Reconstruction would define his presidency 
and lead to his becoming the first president ever to be impeached.

Though Johnson was unable to stop Congress from granting voting 
rights to the African Americans of D.C., he spent much of his term in 
office vetoing the bills of the so-called Radical Reconstructionist.  

Andrew Johnson (1808-1875)

Johnson was the 17th U.S. president,
assumed office after the assassination
of Abraham Lincoln.