Did you know? Black History Facts

On Feb. 12, 2009, the NAACP will mark its 100th anniversary. Spurred by growing racial violence in the early 20th century, and particularly by race riots in Springfield, Ill. in 1908, a group of African-American leaders joined together to form a new permanent civil rights organization, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Feb. 12, 1909 was chosen because it was the centennial anniversary of the birth of Abraham Lincoln.

John Mercer Langston was the first black man to become a lawyer in Ohio when he passed the Bar in 1854. When he was elected to the post of town clerk for Brownhelm, Ohio in 1855, Langston became one of the first African-Americans ever elected to public office in the United States. Langston was also the great uncle of Langston Hughes, famed poet of the Harlem Renaissance. Thurgood Marshall was the first African-American ever appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court. He was appointed by President Lyndon B. Johnson, and served on the Supreme Court from 1967 to 1991. George Washington Carver developed 300 derivative products from peanuts, including cheese, milk, coffee, flour, ink, dyes, plastics, wood stains, soap, linoleum, medicinal oils and cosmetics. Not only did he research 300 products made from peanuts and 118 products from the sweet potato, but 75 from the pecan as well.

Hiram Rhodes Revels was the first African-American ever elected to the U.S. Senate. He represented the state of Mississippi from February 1870 to March 1871. Shirley Chisholm was the first African-American woman elected to the House of Representatives. She was elected in 1968 and represented the state of New York. She broke ground again four years later in 1972 when she was the first major party African-American candidate and the first female candidate for president of the U.S. In 1940, Hattie McDaniel was the first African-American performer to win an Academy Award (the film industry's highest honor) for her portrayal of a loyal slave governess in "Gone With the Wind." In 1992, Dr. Mae Jemison became the first African-American woman to go into space aboard the space shuttle Endeavor. During her eight-day mission, she worked with U.S. and Japanese researchers, and was a co-investigator on a bone cell experiment.

In 1770, Crispus Attucks, whose father was African and mother was a Nantucket Indian, was the first casualty of the American Revolution when he was shot and killed in what became known as the Boston Massacre. The largest women's organization is the National Council of Negro Women. Alexander Lucius Twilight was the first African-American to receive a college degree. He earned a bachelor's degree from Middlebury College in 1823. Elbert Frank Cox became the first African-American to hold a doctorate degree in mathematics, which he received from Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y. in 1925. William Sanders Scarborough (1852-1926) was the first black member of the Modern Language Association. Scarborough, who was president of Wilberforce University in Wilberforce, Ohio, was born into slavery and secretly taught himself to read and write. When he mastered those skills, he went on to learn Greek and Latin. W.E.B. Du Bois became the first African-American to earn a Ph.D. from Harvard. He is best known for his work in founding the NAACP in 1909 and helping it to become the country's single most influential organization for African-Americans. In 1634, French Catholics provided education for all laborers regardless of race in Louisiana, despite the belief and laws that blacks should not be educated. Xavier University, a historically black college in Louisiana, has one of the highest success rates in the country of getting their graduates into medical school. Spelman College in Atlanta is not the only historically black college for women, Bennett College in Greensboro, N.C. is the other one. Dr. Daniel Hale Williams was born in Pennsylvania and attended medical school in Chicago, where he received his M.D. in 1883. He founded the Provident Hospital in Chicago in 1891, the oldest free-standing black-owned hospital in the U.S. Williams was also the only African-American in a group of 100 charter members of the American College of Surgeons in 1913.

The first blacks to settle in Alabama were Moors that arrived with the Spanish in 1540 - 80 years before the Pilgrims.

Matthew Henson, a black explorer, accompanied Admiral Robert E. Peary on the first successful expedition to the North Pole in 1909.

Diahann Carroll was the first African-American woman to have her own weekly television series, "Julia."