On this day in 1932, comedian and civil rights activist Dick Gregory was born in St. Louis. He was one of many Black comics to talk about race.

On this day in 1917, Fannie Lou Hamer was born,the youngest of 20 children on a Mississippi Delta plantation with her sharecropping family.

On this day in 1904, Mary McLeod Bethune opened a training school in Daytona Beach, Florida, that became an accredited college.

On this day in 1851, Syracuse, New York, citizens broke into the city jail and freed escaped slave William “Jerry” Henry.

On this day in 1868, a massacre took place in Opelousas, Louisiana, one of the worst outbreaks of violence during Reconstruction.

On this day in 1912, “Father of the Blues” W.C. Handy published “Memphis Blues,” believed to be the first commercially successful blues song.

On this day in 1961, Herbert Lee became the first local person with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee killed.

On this day in 1957, the Little Rock Nine was blocked from entering Arkansas’ Central High school on the orders of Gov. Orval Faubus.

On this day in 1927, Josephine Baker became the first Black woman to star in a major motion picture.

If Tameshia Shelton's murder indictment is dismissed, as District Attorney Scott Colom requested, it could put an end to a case that has followed her the last 17 years.

On this day in 1955, Moses Wright took the witness stand and identified the men who killed his great-nephew, Emmett Till.

On this day in 1958, Martin Luther King Jr. was stabbed in New York City by a woman with schizophrenia.

On this day in 1966, Martin Luther King Jr. spoke to a mass meeting in Grenada, Mississippi, followed by a march.

On this day in 1899, Scott Joplin, known as “the King of Ragtime,” copyrighted the “Maple Leaf Rag," the first song to sell more than 1 million copies of sheet music.

On this day in 1925, B.B. King, “The King of the Blues”, was born the son of sharecroppers on a plantation near Itta Bena, Mississippi.

On this day in 1963, Klansmen planted a bomb inside the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, that killed four young girls and blinded a fifth.

On this day in 1858, a federal marshal arrested John Price in Oberlin, Ohio, under the Fugitive Slave Act, but abolitionists rescued him.

On this day in 1992, Dr. Mae Carol Jemison became the first Black woman to travel in space, going into orbit aboard the Space Shuttle Endeavour.

On this day in 1963, Henrie Monteith Treadwell, Robert Anderson, and James Solomon led the desegregation of the University of South Carolina.

On this day in 1968, Arthur Ashe became the first Black man to ever win a Grand Slam event, the U.S. Open Singles Tennis Championship.

On this day in 1966, Nichelle Nichols became one of the first Black women to play a lead role on TV, portraying Lt. Uhura on “Star Trek.”

On this day in 1954, schools in Baltimore were desegregated, the first below the Mason-Dixon line.

On this day in 1955, Emmett Till’s mother, Mamie Till-Mobley, opened her son’s casket so that the world could “see what they did to my baby.”

On Sept. 5, 1942, Charles Jackson French, a 22-year-old mess attendant aboard the USS Gregory, rescued 15 sailors during the Battle of Guadalcanal.

On this day in 1957, Elizabeth Eckford attempted to enter Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, as a mob hurled racial slurs and threatened to lynch her.

On this day in 1912, civil rights lawyer R. Jess Brown was born in Kansas, grew up in Oklahoma, and moved to Mississippi after World War II.