On or about August 20, 1619, “20 and odd” Angolans, kidnapped
by the Portuguese, arrived in the British colony of Virginia and
are 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.

                             
CAMILLE
BOHANNON

Robert Redford at 10.

1962
    
   

Charles Robert Redford Jr. is a retired actor and filmmaker. He
has received numerous accolades such as an Academy Award,
a BAFTA Award, and two Golden Globe Awards, as well as the
Cecil B. DeMille Award in 1994, the Screen Actors Guild Life
Achievement Award in 1996, the Academy Honorary Award in
2002, the Kennedy Center Honors in 2005, the Presidential
Medal of Freedom in 2016, and the Honorary César in 2019. He
was named by Time as one of the 100 most influential people
in the world in 2014 (below). He is 88 today.

On August 4, 1936, American Jesse Owens won gold in the long
jump at the Summer Olympics in Berlin, Germany. It was the
second of four gold medals Owens won in Berlin, as he firmly
dispelled German Fuhrer Adolf Hitler’s notion of the superiority
of an Aryan “master race,” for all the world to see.

James Cleveland "Jesse" Owens
(September 12, 1913 – March 31, 1980)

Simmering racial tensions and economic frustrations boiled over
in New York City on the night of August 1, 1943, culminating in
what is now known as the Harlem Riot of 1943.

On July 10, 1893, trailblazing physician Daniel Hale Williams
successfully performed one of the world’s first open-heart
surgeries at Provident Hospital in Chicago. Not only is he a
pioneer of the procedure; he is one of just three African
American physicians practicing in Chicago at a time when
many white-run hospitals refused to treat Black patients—
much less hire Black doctors.

Born in Hollidaysburg, Pennsylvania on January 18, 1856,
Williams worked as a shoemaker’s apprentice and a barber
before graduating from Chicago Medical College in 1883.

Dr. Williams opened Provident Hospital in Chicago,
Illinois, which is known to be the first Black-owned
hospital in the nation.