John Willis Menard was born on April 3, 1838. He was a black politician.

From Kalkaska, Ill., he was the first Black elected to the U.S. Congress who was denied his seat by that body. During the Civil War (1861-65) he served as a clerk in the U.S. Department of the Interior. In 1865 he moved to New Orleans, where he became active in the Republican Party, serving as inspector of customs and later as a commissioner of streets. He also published a newspaper, The Free South, later named The Radical Standard. Elected to Congress from Louisiana in 1868 to fill an unfinished term, Menard failed to overcome an election challenge by the loser and Congress refused to seat either man.   more »

On Nov. 2, 1983, President Reagan signed into law a bill designating the third Monday of January each year as a federal holiday to honor the late civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

The ceremony in the White House Rose Garden was attended by Mrs. Coretta Scott King and family, members of Congress, Civil Rights Movement veterans, educators and business and religious leaders.

During the signing President Reagan said:

"All right-thinking people, all right-thinking Americans are joined in spirit with us this day as the highest recognition which this nation gives is bestowed upon Martin Luther King Jr., one who also was the recipient of the highest recognition which the world bestows, the Nobel Peace Prize.

"America is a more democratic nation, a more just nation, a more peaceful nation because Martin Luther King, Jr. became her preeminent   more »

First issue of Ebony magazine published on November 1, 1945.

John H. Johnson, who was born in poverty and who rose in one generation from the welfare rolls to the rolls of Forbes 400 richest Americans, was the most honored of all publishers. He was a member of the Publishing Hall of Fame, the National Business Hall of Fame, the Advertising Hall of Fame and the Arkansas Business Hall of Fame, and he received the Spingarn Medal, the highest award of the NAACP, and the Salute to Greatness Award, the highest honor of the Martin Luther King Jr. Center, for his contribution to civil rights. In 1972, he was named Publisher of the Year by the Magazine Publishers Association. In 1974 he was named “The Most Outstanding Black Publisher in History” by the National Newspaper Publishers Association. In 2003, he was named “The Greatest Minority Entrepreneur in U.S. History” by Baylor University. In the same year, Howard University named its journalism school the John H. Johnson School of Communications.   more »

Richard Arrington Jr. born in October of 1934 in Livingston, Alabama  was the first African American mayor of the city of Birmingham, Alabama  serving 20 years, from 1979 to 1999. He replaced David Vann and, upon retiring after five terms in office, installed then-City Council president William A. Bell as interim mayor. Bell went on to lose the next election to the current mayor, Bernard Kincaid.

Arrington's father moved his family to the steel-town of Fairfield from rural Sumter County, Alabama when Richard Jr. was five years old to take a job with U.S. Steel. The steady work was an improvement over sharecropping, but Richard Sr. still had to supplement the family income by working off-hours as a brick mason.   more »

Dr. Alonzo G. Moron, a 1932 Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Brown University and member of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, served for three years as commissioner of public welfare in the Virgin Islands, his birthplace. He was the first African-American head of public housing in the city of Atlanta.

On October 29, 1949, Dr. Alonzo G. Moron becomes the eighth president of Hampton Institute and the first African American to hold the position at the school. He served from 1948-1959. A 1927 graduate of the school, he administered the dormitory additions, changed the curriculum, phased out agricultural and the trades, established the academic program, addressed ideological conflicts, and provided an intellectual voice regarding school desegregation in Hampton. Dr. Moron is also recognized as the first Hampton Institute graduate to become President of the school.   more »

Mr. Edward M. McIntyre, who was a member of the first graduating class of Lucy C. Laney High School, was heavily involved in Augusta politics for more than three decades. In 1970, he became the first black member of what was then the Richmond County Board of Commissioners.

That election was the first of several firsts for Mr. McIntyre that would stamp him as a player on the local - and state - political scene.

His most renowned political achievement came Oct. 27, 1981, when he narrowly defeated Joe E. Taylor Sr., in a runoff to become the first black to hold Augusta's top office. Mr. McIntyre overcame racially tinged accusations by Mr. Taylor, who said publicly that "Augusta didn't have a black-white problem. We've got a black candidate problem."   more »

It's Super Bowl Time and Black Greek Network would like to showcase some of NFL's firsts for African Americans. Do you know the answers to these facts?

1. Who was the first African American drafted by an NFL club?

2. Who was the first African American draftee to play in the NFL?

3. Who was the first African - American quarterback in the NFL?

4. Who was the first African American NFL official?

5. Who was the first African American NFL referree?

6. Who was the first African American starting quaterback in a Super Bowl?

7. Who was the first African American NFL  head coach?

8. Who was the frist African American NFL general manager?  ...   more »

Before Muhammad Ali,"The Greatest of All Time", there was another famous African American boxer . In 1805, he was the first black to become a prominent boxer in England. He was also the first black to pursue boxing as a career and the first American boxer to become highly successful at it.

Born a slave in Cuckhold, Staten Island, NY, this boxer became one of boxing's most accomplished and respected fighters of the late-18th and early 19th centuries. While in his early teens, he came to the attention of British general Earl Percy, who was then the commanding general of British forces in New York during America's War of Independence.

Can you guess who this boxer is? ...   more »

This African American was the first African American General in the regular army and in the US Armed Forces. As one of America's military pioneers, he retired after 50 years of service in the Army in 1948, one year after the Air Force separated from the Army Air Corps.

Throughout his military career, the general pushed for racial integration. The year he retired, President Harry S. Truman issued an order banning discrimination in the armed services. This General was the 20th American honored in the U.S. Postal Service’s Black Heritage stamp series in early 1997.

His son later became the Air Force's first African-American general and commander of  The Tuskegee Airmen. Both he and his son are members of Omega Psi Phi Fraternity, Inc. Can you name these Generals? ...   more »

History is not always something that happened a long time ago. History sometimes happens within a blink of an eye. The world lost one of its greatest female pioneers of civil rights, Mrs. Coretta Scott King. She was the widow of Dr. Martin Luther King and is often referred to as”The First Lady of Civil Rights".

Mrs. King was most famously known as the widow of the late Dr. Martin Luther King but she was much more than that. She herself was a civil rights activist that pressed on toward the cause of equality even after the assassination of her husband...    more »