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"African American Firsts." African American Almanac. Gale. 2008. HighBeam Research. 4 May. 2016 <https://www.highbeam.com>.
"African American Firsts." African American Almanac. 2008. HighBeam Research. (May 4, 2016). https://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G2-2690000010.html
"African American Firsts." African American Almanac. Gale. 2008. Retrieved May 04, 2016 from HighBeam Research: https://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G2-2690000010.html
Jessie Carney Smith
As history progresses, African Americans are making greater strides in achieving firsts while at the same time those who preserve such events are taking greater care to record their accomplishments The list that follows gives a wide spectrum of pioneering events and people in history and include such areas of contribution as the arts, education, law, media, medicine, politics, religion, science, and sports. The records include those of people who were the first by race or gender to set a particular mark, thus giving a useful perspective to those who study history.
1619, August 20. At Jamestown colony, the first 20 Africans arrive in English North America from the Caribbean as indentured servants.
1623. The first African American child in the colonies to be baptized a Christian becomes a member of the Anglican Church in Jamestown. The child’s name is William, son of Isabel and William.
1624. William Tucker, who is believed to have been the first African American child born in the American colonies, is born in Jamestown, Virginia.
1746. Slave poet Lucy Terry writes Bars Fight, a commemorative poem recreating the Deerfield (Massachusetts) Massacre. In doing so, she is considered to be the first African American poet in America.
1746. Organized in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the Free African Society is considered the first African American organization in the United States.
1752. Benjamin Banneker builds the first grandfather clock.
1758. Born in 1702 to free parents in Jamaica, Frances Williams graduates from Cambridge University and becomes the first black college graduate in the Western Hemisphere.
1770. While leading fellow patriots in protest against British soldiers, Crispus Attucks is killed, thus becoming the first American to die during the Revolutionary Period. This event is later memorialized as the Boston Massacre.
1773. Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral by 17-year-old Phyllis Wheatley is published in London. It is the first book of poetry published by an African American.
1783. James Derham, born a slave in Philadelphia in 1762, becomes the first African American physician in the United States. Having served as an assistant to his master (a doctor by profession), Derham purchases his freedom in 1783 and goes on to develop a thriving practice with both black and white clientele.
1785, May 15. The first African American missionary minister to work with Native Americans is John Morront of New York. He was ordained a Methodist minister in London, England. Among his converts to the Christian faith are a Cherokee chieftain and his daughter.
1786. Lemuel Haynes, who served during the American Revolution as a minuteman in Connecticut, becomes the first African American minister with a white congregation.
1787. Prince Hall organizes the first African American Masonic Lodge in America.
1789. The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African, Written by Himself is published. It is considered to be the first autobiography written by an African American. The
work becomes a best-seller, with nine English editions and one American edition including translations in Dutch, German, and Russian.
1794. The First African Church of St. Thomas is dedicated in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It is the first African American Episcopal (AME) congregation in the United States.
1802. Pierre Bonza and his wife become the parents of the first non-Native American and the first African American child to be born in North Dakota. Bonza is known for riding wild Buffaloes and in 1804 becomes an interpreter for the Northwest Fur Company.
1816. Richard Allen, founder of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, becomes the first African American bishop.
1817. The African Methodist Episcopal Church organizes the A.M.E. Book Concern in Philadelphia, the first African American-owned book publishing enterprise in the United States. The Book Concern publishes its first book that same year, The Book of Discipline.
1821. New York City’s free African American community establishes the first African American theater, the African Grove Theatre, located at Mercer and Bleecker streets.
1823. The first play written and produced by an African American, The Drama of King Shotaway, is presented by the African Grove Theatre in New York City. The playwright is Henry Brown.
1827. The first African American newspaper, Freedom’s Journal, is published in New York City.
1829. The first African American congregation of Catholic nuns, the Oblate Sisters of Providence, is founded in the United States by Mary Rosine Boegues, Mary Frances Balas, Mary Theresa Duchemin, and Elizabeth Lange.
1829. The first National Negro Convention meets in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
1831. The first Annual Convention of the People of Color meets at Wesleyan Church in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Delegates from five states resolve to study African American conditions, explore settlement possibilities in Canada, and raise money for an industrial college in New Haven.
1834. The first African American believed to have been granted a patent from the U.S. Patent Office is Henry Blair of Greenross, Maryland.
1839. The first anti-slavery political organization, the Liberty Party, is founded in Warsaw, New York. Among its leading supporters are African American abolitionists Samuel R. Ward and Henry Highland Garnet.
1845. Macon Allen becomes the first African American formally admitted to a state bar, after he passes the state bar examination in Worcester, Massachusetts.
1847. Frederick Douglass publishes the first issue of his abolitionist newspaper, The North Star, in Rochester, New York.
1847. David John Peck graduates from Rush Medical College, becoming the first African American to graduate from an American school of medicine.
1853. Lincoln University, the first African American college to be established and remain in its original location, is founded as Ashmum Institute in Oxford, Pennsylvania.
1853. The first novel written and published by an African American is a work by William Wells Brown, entitled Clotel, Or, the President’s Daughter.
1854. John Mercer Langston, who is believed to have been the first African American elected to public office, is elected clerk of Brownhelm, Ohio.
1855. Berea College is the first college established in the United States for the specific purpose of educating blacks and whites together.
1860. The first African American baseball team to tour various parts of the country is called the Brooklyn Excelsiors.
1861. Nicholas Biddle becomes one of the first African Americans wounded during the Civil War. An escaped slave, Biddle attaches himself to a troop unit heading for the defense of Washington, but is stoned by an angry mob in Baltimore. He manages to escape death only with the aid of his white comrades-in-arms.
1861. In Boston, Massachusetts, William C. Nell is appointed postal clerk, becoming the first African American to hold a federal civilian post.
1862. Mary Patterson becomes the first African American woman in the United States to earn a master of arts degree, awarded by Oberlin College.
1863. The first African American appointed a chaplain in the U.S. Army is Henry McNeal Turner.
1863, July 18. The first African American recipient of the Congressional Medal of Honor is Sergeant William H. Carney of the 54th Massachusetts Infantry. He is given the honor for combat valor at Fort Wagner, South Carolina.
1864. Rebecca Lee Crumpler, believed to be the first African American woman physician, graduates from New England Female Medical College.
1865. Henry Highland Garnet is the first African American to deliver a sermon in the chamber of the House of Representatives in the U.S. Capitol.
1865. Martin R. Delany becomes the first African American to attain the rank of major in the U.S. Army. A graduate of Howard University Medical School, Delany served in the Medical Corps. He was also a writer.
1865. Alexander T. Augusta becomes the first African American to hold a medical commission in the U.S. Army. A surgeon and physician with the rank of major, he then becomes the highest ranking African American officer in the Civil War on March 13, when he is promoted to brevet lieutenant colonel.
1865. John Rock becomes the first African American lawyer admitted to practice before the U.S. Supreme Court. His admittance is moved by Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts. Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase presides.
1865. The first African American newspaper in the South—The Colored American—is published in Augusta, Georgia, and edited by J. T. Shutten.
1866. Edward G. Walker and Charles L. Mitchell are elected to the Massachusetts House of Representatives, becoming the first African Americans to serve in a legislative assembly.
1867. Robert Tanner Freeman becomes the first African American to graduate from Harvard University’s School of Dentistry.
1868. Howard University opens its College of Medicine, the first African American medical school in the United States.
1869. George Ruffin graduates from Harvard Law School and becomes the first African American to earn an LL.B. from the university—perhaps the first to graduate from a university law school in the United States.
1869. Ebenezer Don Carlos Bassett, believed to be the first African American to receive an appointment in the diplomatic service, becomes U.S. minister to Haiti.
1869. Harriet E. Adams Wilson becomes the first African American to publish a novel in the United States. It is entitled Our Nig, or, Sketches from the Life of a Free Black, in a Two-Story White House, North, Showing That Slavery’s Shadows Fall Even There.
1870. Richard Greener becomes the first African American to receive a degree from Harvard. Active as a teacher and editor, Greener is admitted to the South Carolina bar in 1876 and becomes dean of Howard University Law School in 1879.
1870. Hiram R. Revels, of Mississippi, becomes the first African American elected to the U.S. Senate. Joseph H. Rainey, of South Carolina, and Jefferson F. Long, of Georgia, are the first black elected members of the House of Representatives.
1871. Alcorn College, now Alcorn State University, is founded as the first African American land grant college.
1872. The first African American midshipman to attend the U.S. Naval Academy is James Henry Conyers of South Carolina. Conyers does not graduate, however, and leaves the academy on November 11, 1873.
1872. Louisiana Lieutenant Governor Pinckney Benton Stewart Pinchback becomes the first African American governor upon impeachment of the incumbent.
1872, February. The first African American woman lawyer, Charlotte E. Ray, receives her degree from Howard University School of Law in Washington, D.C. She is regularly admitted to practice law in any U.S. jurisdiction on March 2, and to practice in the U.S. Supreme Court on April 23.
1872. The first African American delegates to the presidential nominating convention of a major party appear at the Republican Convention in Philadelphia.
1873. The first African American municipal judge, Mifflin W. Gibbs, is elected in Little Rock, Arkansas.
1873. Susan McKinney, believed to be the first African American woman to formally enter the medical profession, is certified as a physician. (Records at the medical college of the New York Infirmary indicate that Rebecca Cole was the first African American woman physician in the United States, having practiced from 1872 to 1881.)
1874. Republican Blanche K. Bruce is elected by the Mississippi state legislature to the U.S. Senate. He becomes the first African American to serve a full term in the U.S. Senate.
1875, May 17. Oliver Lewis, an African American riding in the first Kentucky Derby, becomes the race’s first winner.
1875, June 10. Reverend James Augustine Healy becomes the first African American Roman Catholic bishop in the United States. He is ordained in Paris, France. Two brothers followed him in the priesthood.
1876. Graduating from Yale University, Edward A. Bouchet becomes the first African American to earn a Ph.D. from an American university.
1877. George Washington Henderson is elected to Phi Beta Kappa, becoming the first African American to gain membership in the honor society.
1877. Henry O. Flipper becomes the first African American to graduate from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.
1879, August 1. In Boston, Mary E. Mahoney becomes the first African American woman to receive a diploma in nursing from New England Hospital for Women and Children.
1882. The first daily newspaper owned by an African American, The Cairo Illinois Gazette, is published by W. S. Scott.
1884. John Roy Lynch becomes the first African American to preside over a national political convention, when he is nominated temporary chairman of the Republican Party’s national convention.
1884. Moses Fleetwood Walker becomes the first African American major league baseball player when he plays for Toledo in the American Association.
1885. The first African American state legislator elected to represent a majority white constituency is Bishop Benjamin William Arnett of the African Methodist Episcopal Church.
1885. The first African American professional baseball team, The Cuban Giants, is formed in New York City by Frank Thompson from a group of waiters at a Long Island hotel.
1885. The first African American Protestant Episcopal bishop in the United States, the Reverend Samuel David Ferguson, is elected to the House of Bishops.
1885. Jonathan Jasper Wright becomes the first African American elected to the State Supreme Court of South Carolina. He is also the first African American to be admitted to the bar in Pennsylvania.
1886. Augustine Tolton is ordained as an American Roman Catholic priest. Because he is widely known and his work publicized, he and is sometimes called the first African American to hold that title. The Healy brothers, whose racial identity is not always known, predate him.
1886. George “Little Chocolate” Dixon becomes the first African American to win a world boxing title.
1890. Thomy Lafon, a real estate speculator and money lender in Louisiana, is believed to have been the first African American millionaire in the United States.
1891. Daniel Hale Williams, physician and surgeon, founds Provident Hospital in Chicago, Illinois, which includes the first training school for African American nurses in the United States.
1892. The first African American college football game is played between Biddle College (now Johnson C. Smith University) and Livingstone College. Biddle wins 4 to 0.
1893. Dr. Daniel Hale Williams becomes the first surgeon to successfully enter the chest cavity and suture the heart of a living patient.
1893, September 19. E. R. Robinson patents the electric railway trolley.
1894. W. E. B. Du Bois becomes the first African American to be awarded a Ph.D. by Harvard University.
1902. Off Bloomingdale Asylum, a satirical comedy, is the first film to use African American actors. The film is made in Paris, France.
1903. Maggie Lena Walker becomes the first African American woman bank president when she founds the Saint Luke Penny Thrift Savings Bank in Richmond, Virginia.
1904, May 4. The first African American Greek letter organization, Sigma Pi Phi (or the Boulé), is founded in Philadelphia. Its mission is to meet the social needs of African American business leaders and professionals.
1905. The Louisville Free Public Library in Kentucky is established as the first public library in the nation built exclusively for African Americans.
1906. The first African American collegiate fraternity, Alpha Phi Alpha, is organized at Cornell University.
1907. John Hope is named president of Atlanta Baptist College. He is the first African American to be appointed president at a Baptist school. As president, Hope expands the college with funds donated by John T. Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie.
1907. Alain Leroy Locke becomes the first African American awarded a Rhodes Scholarship.
1908. The first African American sorority, Alpha Kappa Alpha, is founded at Howard University in Washington, D.C.
1908. John Baxter Taylor Jr., collegiate champion, sets a world record in the 440-yard relay at the London Olympic Games, becoming the first African American to win a gold medal. Other members of his relay team are Nathaniel Cartmell, Melvin Sheppard, and William Hamilton.
1908. Jack Johnson wins a bout with Tommy Burns to become the first African American heavyweight champion.
1911, November 17. The Omega Psi Phi Fraternity becomes the first Greek-letter fraternity formed by African Americans on an African American college campus. It was founded at Howard University, Washington, D.C.
1912. George Edmund Haynes is the first African American to received a doctorate from Columbia University. …
National Catholic Reporter; November 14, 2003
Jet; July 12, 1999
Health Services Research; December 1, 2006
The American Surgeon; March 1, 2008
States News Service; September 13, 2011
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