IT is my honor, my pleasure and my duty as an African American to offer the facts and accomplishments during Black History Month for the People of the CNMI to read. However, Trump is banning Black History Month, MLK Day, Juneteenth, Women’s Day Events, Holocaust Day, LGBTQ Month, and other special observances, as some have already deemed “White Supremacy is the New Order OF America.” The LOL for me is many GOP Locals are going to learn the hard way “They ARE NOT White” and in the same boat with me, for TRUE! But “if not you (Ambrose) then who (will fight & promote Black History Month), and if not now, then when (will you or others promote Black History Month).” People know that I took the late Bishop’s request to “Help his People” seriously & Dr. King’s challenge seriously to “keep his DREAM Alive” and it will continue to be “a day on and never a day off” to keep his Dream alive for Ambrose!
Just as there are “White Supremist Bigots on the mainland,” there are Local Supremist Bigots who don’t want a Blackman from the mainland dictating the needed policies & laws and exposing the Local Governors’ corruption, nepotism and racketeering schemes leading to NO acceptance and even vengeance because the TRUTH hurts. However instead of being appreciative of Ambrose for saving the People MILLIONS and offering good economic advice, our GOP leaders have decimated the moral fiber of the CNMI & many people to preserve “Local Supremacy” and would rather see the CNMI & people suffer than “a Blackman contributing.” The choice has clearly been to KILL the Solutions & Truth shared by Ambrose to preserve Local backroom bigotry for GOP’s Local Supremacy just like the KKK did during slavery, Jim Crow and today with Klu Klux Trumpism. But their bigotry doesn’t fix anything and the dismal state of our economy & quality of life is proof!
African Americans have made significant contributions to America since the 1700s and blackballing their contributions anywhere in America is WRONG in this day and age after the Civil Rights Movement! The CNMI is its own worst enemy by CHOICE, as this “local Republican THING is KILLING the CNMI’s Economy and Quality of life” when WE should be trying to get ahead to be more like America. Racism over TRUTH & Evil is an ugly movie that has been replayed too many times in the annals of American History and yet the CNMI continues making the same mistakes!
However, given Locals are People of Color like me with some even being darker with curlier hair know they would have gone to a Black school with me during segregation. I’m sure the open-minded & righteous people support my efforts to erase the ugly bigotry-paradigm in the CNMI. It should also be noted that Black History in the Marianas also dates back to the 1800s when African Whalers jumped ship after seeing the beautiful long-haired women ashore and started families that can be traced to Local families of today. I’m sure many Locals can truly relate to and appreciate the African American experience in America and the barriers they destroyed to help the cause of Locals as People of color, which is why Locals flock to the mainland where they can prosper and are treated EQUALLY! There are many contributions of African Americans to our great nation, and just think, February only represents a small number of people & events that are duly noted in Black History Month. Prayers for the CNMI & its People to One Day “OVERCOME the moral & political challenges to find real Prosperity”!
Black History Month Calendar of People & Events
• Feb. 1, 1865 – The 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which abolished slavery, was adopted by the 38th Congress.
• Feb. 1, 1902 – Langston Hughes, a famous African American poet, was born this day in Joplin, Mo.
• Feb. 1, 1926 – What is now known as Black History Month was first celebrated on this date as Negro History Week by Carter G. Woodson. It became a month-long celebration in 1976.
• Feb. 2, 1862 – The District of Columbia abolishes slavery.
• Feb. 2, 1914 – Ernest Just, genetic biologist, wins the Spingarn Medal. He received this same medal on this day in 1915 for his pioneering in cell division and fertilization.
• Feb. 2, 1948 – President Truman sent Congress a special message urging the adoption of a Civil Rights program, including the creation of a fair employment practices commission.
• Feb. 3, 1903 – Jack Johnson wins the Negro Heavyweight title. John Arthur Johnson (March 31, 1878 – June 10, 1946), nicknamed the “Galveston Giant,” who married a white woman at the height of the Jim Crow era and eventually became the first African American world heavyweight boxing champion (1908–1915).
• Feb. 3, 1920 – The Negro Baseball League is founded.
• Feb. 3, 1965 – Geraldine McCullough, sculptor, wins the Widener Gold Medal Award.
• Feb. 4, 1913 – Rosa Parks (born Rosa Louise McCauley) was born on this day.
• Feb. 4, 1971 – National Guard mobilized to quell rioting in Wilmington, N.C. Two persons killed.
• Feb. 4, 1996 – J. C. Watts becomes the first Black selected to respond to a State of the Union Address.
• Feb. 5, 1866 – Congressman Thaddeus Stevens offered an amendment to the Freedmen’s Bureau Bill authorizing the distribution of public land and confiscated
• Feb. 6, 1820 – “Mayflower of Liberia” sailed from New York City with eighty-six Blacks left New York Harbor aboard the ship the Elizabeth, which was called the Mayflower of Liberia. They were bound for the British colony of Sierra Leone. Note: The heritage of the Potter Family was also traced with DNA Testing to Sierra Leone, male ancestors of Ambrose M. Bennett. The first land to freedmen from slavery and loyal refugees in 40-acre lots and mule. (Note: Peter Potter, the great grandfather of Ambrose M. Bennett, was freed in downtown Jackson Mississippi and able to get his “land & a mule” with other slaves in the same area that the slaves called Freetown” which was near what is today Star Mississippi.) However, it was the worst quality of farmland in the area that eventually forced the former slaves to abandon.
• Feb. 5, 1958 – Clifton R. Wharton Sr. confirmed as minister to Rumania. This career diplomat was the first Black to head a U.S. embassy in Europe.
• Feb. 5, 1962 – Suit seeking to bar Englewood, N.J., from maintaining “racial segregated” elementary schools filed in U.S. District Court.
• Feb. 6, 1993 – Arthur Ashe dies. He was the first African American tennis player to win at Wimbledon.
• Feb. 6, 1867 – Robert Tanner Jackson becomes first African American to receive a degree in dentistry.
• Feb. 7, 1926 – Negro History Week originated by Carter G. Woodson is observed for the first time.
• Feb. 7, 2019 – The first African American “Madear” was officially recognized in the Gladys “MaDear” Bennett House, as her home is now an official Local, State & National Historic Site for her vocational school for Blacks & other social contributions to African American Society & the City of Memphis Tn. The State of Tennessee has also recently recognized & named the walkway over the expressway near MaDear’s home as the “Gladys MaDear Bennett Memorial Walkway” for her activism to get the walkway built. The expressway had divided the neighborhood separating families & friends. It is the first walkway overpass entering Memphis from Arkansas and the last leaving for millions of motorists to see. The Gladys “MaDear” Bennett House will eventually be turned into a tourist site, and it is also the home of the CNMI’s activist Ambrose M. Bennett the son of Gladys Madear Bennett, as she obviously stamped Ambrose’s activism at birth.
• Feb. 8, 1944 – Harry S. McAlphin, first African American to be accredited to attend the White House press conference.
• Feb. 8, 1986 – Oprah Winfrey becomes the first African American woman to host a nationally syndicated talk show.
• Feb. 9, 1944 – Novelist Alice Walker was born in Eatonton, Ga.
• Feb. 9, 1952 – Author Ralph Ellison’s novel Invisible Man wins the National Book Award.
• Feb. 9, 1971 – Leroy “Satchel” Paige is inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame.
• Feb. 9, 1995 – Bernard Harris, African-American astronaut, takes space-walk.
• Feb 10, 1927 – Leontyne Price, who became an internationally acclaimed opera singer, was born in Laurel, Miss.
• Feb. 10, 1964 – After 12 days of debate and voting on 125 amendments, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 by a vote of 290-130.
• Feb. 10, 1966 – Economist Andrew Brimer is appointed to the Federal Reserve Board.
• Feb. 11, 1961 – The first African-American Robert Weaver sworn in as appointed Black economist to lead the newly established HUD Agency paving the way for new Black leaders to come.
• Feb. 11, 1976 – Clifford Alexander Jr. confirmed as the first black secretary of the United States Army.
• Feb. 11, 1990 – Nelson Mandela is released from a South African prison after being detained for 27 years as political prisoner. He won in the next election to become the first Black S. African President.
• Feb. 12, 1865 – Henry Highland Garnet, administrator of the Housing and Home Finance Agency, highest federal post to date by a African-American.
• Feb. 12, 1909 – The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People was founded. The call for the organizational meeting was issued on 100th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln’s birth by 47 whites and six blacks.
• Feb. 12, 1948 – First Lt. Nancy C. Leftneant became the first black woman accepted in the regular Army Nursing Corps.
• Feb. 13, 1923 – The first black professional basketball team, “The Renaissance,” was organized.
• Feb. 13, 1957 – Southern Christian Leadership Conference organized at New Orleans meeting with Martin Luther King Jr. as president.
• Feb 13, 1970 – The New York Stock Exchange admits its first black member, Joseph Searles.
• Feb. 14, 1817 – Frederick Douglass, “The Great Emancipator,” is born.
• Feb. 14, 1867 – Morehouse College organized in Augusta, Ga. The institution was later moved to Atlanta. New registration law in Tennessee abolished racial distinctions in voting.
• Feb. 14, 1936 – National Negro Congress organized at Chicago meeting attended by 817 delegates representing more than 500 organizations.
• Feb. 15, 1848 – Sarah Roberts barred from white school in Boston. Her father, Benjamin Roberts, filed the first school integration suit on her behalf.
• Feb. 15, 1857 – Frederick Douglass elected President of Freeman Bank and Trust.
• Feb. 15, 1923 – Bessie Smith makes her first recording, “Down Hearted Blues,”
• Feb. 15, 1851 – Black abolitionists invaded a Boston courtroom and rescued a fugitive slave.
• Feb. 15, 1968 – Henry Lewis becomes the first black to lead a symphony orchestra in the United States, which sells 800,000 copies for Columbia Records.
• Feb. 16, 1951 – New York City Council passes a bill prohibiting racial discrimination in city-assisted housing developments.
• Feb. 17, 1870 – Congress passed a resolution readmitting Mississippi on condition that it would never change its constitution to disenfranchise blacks.
• Feb. 17, 1963 – Michael Jeffrey Jordan, famed basketball player and former minor league baseball player, born in New York, N.Y.
• Feb. 17, 1997 – Virginia House of Delegates votes unanimously to retire the state song, “Carry Me Back to Old Virginia,” a tune that glorifies slavery.
• Feb. 18, 1688 – First formal protest against slavery by organized white body in English America made by Germantown Quakers at monthly meeting.
• Feb. 18, 1865 – Rebels abandoned Charleston. First Union troops to enter the city included twenty-first U.S.C.T., followed by two companies of the 54th Massachusetts Volunteers.
• Feb. 18, 1931 – Toni Morrison (born Chloe Anthony Wofford), who won the Pulitzer Prize for her novel Beloved, was born on this day in Lorain, Ohio. She was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1993.
• Feb. 19, 1919 – Pan-African Congress, organized by W.E.B. DuBois, met at the Grand Hotel, Paris. There were 57 delegates -16 from the United States and 14 from Africa as well as others from 16 countries and colonies.
• Feb. 20, 1895 – Death of Frederick Douglass. Douglass was the leading black spokesman for almost 50 years. He was a major abolitionist, lecturer, and editor.
• Feb. 21, 1895 – North Carolina Legislature, dominated by black Republicans and white Populists, adjourned for the day to mark the death of Frederick Douglass.
• Feb 22, 1979 – Frank E. Peterson Jr. became the first black general in the Marine Corps.
• Feb. 23, 1965 – Constance Baker Motley elected Manhattan Borough president, the highest elective office held by a black woman in a major American city.
• Feb. 24, 1864 – Rebecca Lee became the first black woman to receive an M.D. degree.
• Feb. 25, 1870 – Hirman R. Revels of Mississippi was sworn in as first black U.S. Senator and first black Representative in Congress.
• Feb. 25, 1948 – Martin Luther King was ordained as a Baptist minister.
• Feb. 25, 1971 – President Nixon met with members of the Congressional Black Caucus and appointed a White House panel to study a list of recommendations made by the group.
• Feb. 26, 1869 – Fifteenth Amendment guaranteeing the right to vote sent to the states for ratification.
• Feb. 26, 1926 – Carter G. Woodson started Negro History Week. This week would later become Black History Month.
• Feb. 27, 1869 – John W. Menard spoke in Congress in defense of his claim to a contested seat in Louisiana’s Second Congressional District. Congress decided against both claimants. Congressman James A. Garfield of the examining committee said “it was too early to admit a Negro to the U.S. Congress.” Menard was the first black to make a speech in Congress.
• Feb. 27, 1988 – Figure skater Debi Thomas becomes the first African American to win a medal (bronze) at the winter Olympic Games.
• Feb. 28, 1859 – Arkansas legislature required free blacks to choose between exile and enslavement.
• Feb. 28, 1932 – Richard Spikes invented/patented the automatic gear shift.
