Rosa Parks, a Montgomery , Ala-bama, seamstress,

was arrested by Montgom-ery police

for refusing to move to the back of

the bus and give her seat to a white

passenger. This incident lead to the successful boycott of the Montgomery city bus system by African Africans in 1955.

In 1970, the US Senate voted 70 to

12 to approve a federal grant that

would give the Taos Pueblo people title to 48,000 acres of

land in New Mexico.

In 1639, the Bronx portion of New York was purchased from Native Americans. The purchase was made by German

immigrant Jonas Bronck, a farmer,

for whom the region is currently

named.

The Amsterdam News, the largest African American-owned newspaper in New York City and the largest weekly community newspaper in the United States,

was started in 1909 in the New York City home of James H. Anderson.

In 1992, Mae Jemison was the first female astronaut of African American descent to go into space. Her first mission was a cooperative effort

between the US and Japan which focused on experiments in space to gain more knowledge about the life sciences.

The Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution was ratified in 1865,

ending the institution of slavery in the

United States by law.

The true end of slavery came on April 19, 1865,

when the Confederate troops of the South surren-

dered to the Union troops of the

North.

The Reverend W. Sterling Cary, a

New York minister, became the first African American

to be elected president of the

National Council of Churches.

The true end of slavery came on April 19, 1865,

when the Confederate troops of the South surren-

dered to the Union troops of the

North.

John Lennon, former lead

guitarist of The Beatles, was shot to death in New

York City outside his apartment building, the

Dakota, in 1980.

The true end of slavery came on April 19, 1865,

when the Confederate troops of the South surren-

dered to the Union troops of the

North.

Sinclair Lewis was awarded the 1930

Nobel Prize for Literature. He was the first US author to win the prize in that category. His

body of work exposed the

weaknesses he saw in US social life, expressed in

such books as Main Street

(1920), Babbitt (1922), and Elmer

Gantry (1927).

Diane Feinstein , a former city

superviso, became the first woman to serve as mayor of San Francisco in 1979. In 1992,

she was one of two women from the

state of California elected to the US

Senate.

A lower court ruling requiring Native

American students in Oklahoma to cut their

hair to meet school regulations was

upheld by the US Supreme Court during

this week in 1973.

During this month in 1983, Katherine Durn-

ham, African American dancer,

choreographer and anthropologist,

received a Kennedy Center Honor—the highest award an

artist in the US can receive.

During this week in 1991, Mexican American actor Martin Sheen (Ramon Estevez) opened in a revival of Arthur Miller’s The Crucible at the Belasco Theater in New York.

One of the earliest efforts by General DeWill of the US to have Japanese aliens placed in internment camps while the US was involved in World War II was initiated on this day in 1941. In this early

communication, DeWitt urged the internment of aliens of all countries with whom the US was at war, including Japan, Germany, and Italy.

Lucy Ann Staton-Sessions of

Cleveland, Ohio, became the first African American woman college

graduate in the US during this month

in

1850. Ms. Stanton-Sessions received a Bachelor of Literature degree from Oberlin College in Oberlin, Ohio.

In 1946 Wing F. Ong became the first Chinese American elected to a state legislature. Ong was elected to the Arizona State Legislature.

Attorney General of the state of Massachusetts Edward Brooke became the first African American to be elected to the US Senate by popular vote in 1966.

Senator Brooke was a member of the Republican party.

The Vietnam Memorial was opened on this day in 1982 in Washington, DC. The memorial was designed by Maya Ying Lin, a Vietnamese American architecture

In 1917, 41 women from 15 states were arrested outside the White House in Washington, DC for suffragette demon-strations. The women did nothing more than picket the White House with

signs demanding voting rights. The arrested women drew sentences that ranged from six days to six months imprisonment.

student from Yale University. It was the first major tribute to US soldiers who fought in Vietnam.

William O. Douglas, associate justice of the US Supreme Court, announced his retirement from the court in 1975. Douglas served for 36

years, the longest term of service of any Supreme Court justice through the year 1992. He retired due to illness. Justice Douglas earned a reputation

during his service as a civil libertarian, broadly interpreting the Constitution for the benefit of the rights of individuals, including civil rights.

In 1990, President Bush signed a bill that protected

the gravesites of Native Americans and required the

return of remains and artifacts from such sites to the Native American tribes to which they belonged.

President John F. Kennedy was shot and killed by a sniper’s bullet as he rode in a motorcade in Dallas, Texas in 1963.He became the fourth

president to be assass-inated and the first in 62 years. Texas Governor John Connally was also wounded. Several hours later, Lee Harvey Oswald was arrested and charged with the crime.

African American farmer and inventor Andrew Jackson Beard was awarded a patent for his “Jenny” coupler in 1899. The coupler allowed train cars to be joined

together simply by bumping them against one another. The device cut back on serious injuries, such as the loss of limbs, that occurred frequently using previous coupling methods.

Following the murder of President John F. Kennedy two days earlier, alleged assassin Lee Harvey Oswald was shot and killed while being escorted from a Dallas

jail. Oswald was shot by Jack Ruby. The event, captured by the many television cameras waiting to photograph Oswald, became the first nationally televised murder. Ruby was

immediately apprehend-ed following the inci-dent.

In 1887, African American inventor Granville T. Woods, was granted a patent for his induction telegraph system. The system permitted communication

between moving trains, making train travel safer.

During this month in 1769, a school founded 20 years earlier by the Reverend Eleazar Wheelock for the purpose of education Native Americans

became Dartmouth College. At the new college’s inception, 10 of the 28 students attending the school were Native Americans.