Black History Facts – 39 Little Known Facts About Black History

Black History Month Facts

Hattie McDaniel became the first African-American to get an academy award for her role as a loyal slave governess in Gone with the Wind

Mae Jemison is the first African American woman to go into space in 1992. She went to space in the space shuttle Endeavor for the 8 day mission. She was a part of a joint US-Japanese bone cell experiment.

Rosa Parks was the first person to refuse to give up her seat on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama. It launched the launched the Montgomery bus boycott.

Another account says that Claudette, a fifteen-year-old schoolgirl on March 2, 1955, refused to move to the back of the bus, nine months before the Rosa Parks incident.

However at that time NAACP and other Black organizations felt that Rosa Parks was a better front and poster girl than a teenager. She was also the secretary of NAACP and was highly respected. The middle class could also associate themselves with her. The middle class and the young were at the forefront of the anti racist campaign.

More than 250,000 Americans gathered at the Lincoln Memorial to hear the final speech by Martin Luther King Jr.

Martin Luther King Jr rose to the podium where he set aside his notes which he had prepared the night before with a small group of advisors.

The original speech was more political and less historic.

King spoke those immortal lines “we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream,”

Mahalia Jackson, singer, kept repeating “Tell ‘em about the dream, Martin,”