On April 2, 1930, Haile Selassie, name meaning “Power of the Trinity”, became the emperor of Ethiopia.

After two false starts - the first resulting in Bloody Sunday, where 600 civil rights marchers were attacked by state and local police - more than 8,000 people set out on Sunday, March 21, 1965 from Selma, Alabama to Montgomery.

On March 20, 1952, Uncle Tom’s Cabin , the second best-selling novel of the 19th century, after the Bible, was published in Boston, MA.

In the opening lines of Langston Hughes’ poem “Harlem” he asks, What happens to a dream deferred? / Does it dry up / like a raisin in the sun?/ Or does it explode? On March 11, 1959 Lorraine Hansberry’s A Rasin in the Sun debuts at Broadway’s Ethel Barrymore Theater, bringing answers to Hughes’ question.

On March 6, 1857, the United States Supreme Court rules on the Dred Scott case, declaring that African Americans are not U.S. citizens. The decision intensifies ongoing debates about slavery.

On February 29, 1940, Hattie Mcdaniels wins Best Supporting Actress for her role as Mammy in Gone with the Wind, making her the first Black performer to win an Academy Award.

On February 21, 1965 in Manhattan’s Audubon Ballroom, Malcolm X was delivering a speech to a crowd of over 400 people, when a disturbance broke out and a man yelled, “Get your hand outta my pocket! Don’t be messin’ with my pockets!”

After spending 27 years in prison, Nelson Mandela is released. Millions watch as it is broadcast around the world.

In 1997, J.C. Watts was selected to give the Republican response to former President Clinton’s State of the Union Address, making him the first African-American to do so.

One of the first African-American petitions to the U.S. Congress was submitted by four black men - Jupiter Nicholson, Jacob Nicholson, Joe Albert and Thomas Pritchet -who had been freed by their owners in North Carolina over a decade earlier and had moved north to Philadelphia.