February's other Notable African American Achievers
February 1, 1902 - Playwright, poet, author Langston Hughes born
February 2, 1807 - Congress bans foreign slave trade.
February 3, 1956 - Autherine Lucy enrolls as the first African American student at the University of Alabama.
February 4, 1913 - Rosa Parks, civil rights pioneer who sparked Montgomery bus boycott, born.
February 5, 1934 - Major league home run champion Hank Aaron born.
February 6, 1867 - Robert Tanner Jackson becomes first African American to receive a degree in dentistry.
February 7, 1883 - Ragtime pianist and composer Hubie Blake born.
February 9, 1964 - Arthur Ashe, Jr. becomes first African American on U.S. Davis Cup tennis team.
February 10, 1989 - Ronald H. Brown is elected chairman of the Democratic National Committee.
February 11, 1990 - Nelson Mandela is released from prison after 27 years.
February 12, 1909 - NAACP founded.
February 14, 1879 - B.K. Bruce of Mississippi becomes first African American to preside over U.S. Senate.
February 16, 1874 - Frederick Douglass elected president of Freedman’s Bank and Trust.
February 17, 1902 - Marion Anderson, internationally acclaimed opera star, born.
February 18, 1931 - Toni Morrison, winner of 1988 Pulitzer Prize for fiction, born in Ohio.
February 21, 1965 - Malcolm X is assassinated.
February 22, 1989 - Col. Frederick Gregory was the first African American to command a space shuttle mission.
February 23, 1868 - W.E.B. Dubois, was born in Massachusetts.
February 26, 1965 - Civil rights activist Jimmie Lee Jackson died after being shot by state police in Marion, Ala.
February 27, 1988 - Debi Thomas becomes first Black to win an Olympic medal in figure skating.
February 29, 1892 - Sculptor Augusta Savage was born.