DECEMBER
1st
1955 - Rosa Parks arrested for refusing to move to the back of bus and give her seat to a white passenger
1952 - The New York Daily News reports the first successful sexual reassignment operation.
1912 – Minoru Yamasaki, the man who designed the world trade center is born
2nd
1859 - Abolitionist leader John Brown (a white male) was executed for treason at Charles Town, West Virginia, following his raid on the U.S. Arsenal at Harper's Ferry.
1975 – Archie Brown, an African-American student at Ohio State University becomes the first college football player to win two consecutive Heisman trophies. He remains the only two-time winner in history.
3rd
1868 - 1st blacks on US trial jury appointed for Jefferson Davis trial
1948 - 1st US woman army officer not in medical corps sworn in
4th
1843 - American Anti-Slavery Society formed by Arthur Tappan in Philadelphia
1922 - Lucille Atcherson, becomes 1st woman legation sect-US foreign service
5th
1955 - Historic Montgomery bus boycott begins in Montgomery Alabama in response to the arrest of Rosa Parks
1946 – President Truman establishes a Committee on Civil Rights to study the issue of violence toward African-Americans
6th
1865 - 13th Amendment of the United States Constitution is ratified
1987 – 200,000 protesters come out against Soviet treatment of Jews take place in Washington DC and Moscow on the eve of Premier Gorbachev’s visit.
7th
1941 – Japanese forces attack Pearl Harbor, HI leading the United States entry into World War II and the deportation of Japanese nationals and internment of Japanese-Americans
2005 – Brokeback Mountain premieres in Hollywood.
8th
1863 – President Lincoln issues the Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction to reconcile and reunite the United States without slavery.
1941 - Jeanette Rankin (Republican from Montana), the first woman elected to Congress and a dedicated lifelong pacifist, casts the sole Congressional vote against the declaration of war on Japan.
9th
1908 – William Carney, the first African-American awarded the Medal of Honor died in his home. He was awarded the medal for his action the battle of Fort Wagner in the Civil War.
1972 – “I am Woman” by Helen Reddy tops the U.S. pop music charts.
10th
1869 - Women suffrage (right to vote) granted in Wyoming Territory (US 1st)
1948 - The General Assembly of the United Nations adopted and proclaimed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which allows these rights to all regardless of race, color, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status
1950 - Dr. Ralph Bunche became the first African American man awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, for his efforts in mediation between Israel and nearby Arab states the previous year.
11th
1882 – Fiorella H. LaGuardia, later the iconic mayor of New York City was born.
1964 – Argentine Poster Boy Revolutionary Che Guevera speaks at the UN General Assembly in New York City.
12th
1870 - Joseph Hayne Rainey of Georgetown, South Carolina, became the first African American to serve in the U.S. House of Representatives. He filled a seat, which had been declared vacant by the House and served until 1879.
1961 - Martin Luther King Jr. & 700 demonstrators arrested in Albany Ga
13th
1903 - Italo Marcioni, an Italian ice/ice cream vendor on Wall Street patents ice cream cone mold
1978 - The first Susan B. Anthony, a key figure in the woman suffrage movement, dollar is minted but is not accepted by the public due to its very similar appearance to the quarter. She is the first woman to be minted onto a coin in the U.S.
14th
1964 – Heart of Atlanta Hotel v. United States is decided by the Supreme Court upholding the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
1961 - President's Commission on the Status of Women is established to examine discrimination and how to end it.
15th
1890 - Sioux leader Sitting Bull (native name Tatanka-yatanka) was killed in a skirmish with U.S. soldiers along the Grand River in South Dakota as his warriors tried to prevent his arrest
1973 - American Psychiatric Association declares homosexuality is not a mental illness
16th
1901 - Anthropologist Margaret Mead, known for her outspoken manner regarding social issues such as women's rights, child rearing, population control and world hunger, is born
2000 - George W. Bush announces his selection for secretary of state, Colin Powell, who becomes the first African-American Secretary Of State.
17th
1760 – Deborah Sampson, who disguised herself as a man and enlisted in the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War, is born
1903 – Wilbur and Orville Wright make their first flight at Kittyhawk, North Carolina
18th
1865 - Secretary of State William H. Seward proclaims the adoption of the 13th Amendment
1875 - Historian Carter Woodson, who introduced black studies to American colleges and universities is born
19th
1891 - 1st Black Catholic priest ordained in US, Charles Uncles, Baltimore
2007 - The Lakotah people, a Native American tribe, proclaim independence and withdraw all their treaties with the United States. They then proceed to establish the Republic of Lakotah, with an ongoing process of international recognition as a separate country
20th
1956 – the Montgomery bus boycott ends when a U.S. Supreme Court ruling integrated the public transportation system
1836 - President Andrew Jackson presents Congress with a treaty he negotiated with the Ioway, Sacs, Sioux, Fox, Otoe and Omaha tribes of the Missouri territory.
21st
1996 - Margret Rey, who created the popular “Curious George” children’s books about a mischievous monkey, dies at age 90 in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Mrs. Rey is a German Jew, who escaped wartime Europe in 1940 and fled to America. The following year, the first “Curious George” book was published.
1988 - Jesse Jackson urges the use of the term "African-American" as an alternative to Black Americans.
22nd
2010 - The repeal of the Don't Ask Don't Tell policy, the 17-year-old policy banning on homosexuals serving openly in the United States military, was signed into law by President Barack Obama.
1996 – US Navy Commander John Herrington enters astronaut training. He later became the first enrolled member of a Native American tribe to fly in space. (William R. Pogue was of Choctaw ancestry and was a crewman aboard Skylab 4 in 1973–74, but he was not an enrolled member of the Choctaw.)
23rd
1944 - Public Law 238 granted full military rank to members of the Navy Nurse Corps. Sue Dauser, the Director of the Navy Nurse Corps, became the first female in the rank of Captain. Harriet Ida Pickens and Frances Elizabeth Wills became the first African American female officers in the Navy.
1869 – Madam C.J. Walker, businesswoman and first African American woman millionaire, is born.
24th
1745 - Benjamin Rush, a doctor and humanitarian (called the Father of Psychiatry) who signed the declaration of independence and whose writings countered the prevailing notion that alcohol was generally good for people and was one of the first to describe alcoholism as a chronic disease is born
1948 - The first U.S. house to be completely solar heated was occupied in Dover, Massachusetts. This was the product of three women: Amelia Peabody, who sponsored the experiments; Eleanor Raymond, the architect who designed the Dover Sun House; and Dr. Maria Telks, a Hungarian-American physical chemist and biophysicist, dubbed “the Sun Queen”. Working out of the MIT Solar Laboratory, she also developed solar distillation of sea water for fresh water, solar ovens, and many other solar projects.
25th
1821 - Clara Barton, who founded the American Red Cross in 1881, is
2002 – The University of New Mexico junior place-kicker Katie Hnida attempts to kick an extra point in a game against UCLA in the Las Vegas Bowl. Though her kick was blocked by UCLA, Hnida became the first woman to play in a Division I football game.
26th
1966 - The first Kwanzaa is celebrated by Maulana Karenga, the chair of Black Studies at California State University, Long Beach.
1997 - The term Latino was officially adopted in 1997 by the United States Government, replacing the term Hispanic.
27th
1900 – Carrie Nation, temperance activist, stages her first raid on a bar in Wichita, KS.
1954 - the formerly believed “law” of conservation of parity was disproved in the first successful results from an experiment conducted by Madame Chien-Shiung Wu (a Chinese-American woman) at Columbia University on the beta-decay of cobalt-60
1917 - The 369th Infantry Regiment, known as the Harlem Hellfighters became the first all-black U.S. combat unit to be shipped overseas during World War I.
28th
1860 - Harriet Tubman arrives in Auburn NY, on her last mission to free slaves, evading capture for 8 years on the Underground Railroad
1981 – Elizabeth Carr, the first American test tube baby is born in Norfolk, VA.
29th
1890 - Having intercepted Sitting Bull's followers the previous day, a battalion of the Seventh Cavalry opens fire on the Sioux camp on the Wounded Knee Creek, killing 300 people—two-thirds of them women and children. The "Wounded Knee Massacre" effectively marks the end of armed Indian resistance to white western expansion in the nineteenth century.
1980 – Maya Lin, a Vietnamese-American and 2,573 others register for a design competition for the Vietnam War Memorial. She wins the $50,000 prize. There were opponents to Lin's design and a sculpture of three soldiers was added. The statue, which was unveiled in 1984, purposefully identifies as White American, African American, and Hispanic American.
30th
1924 - Astronomer Edwin Hubble formally announces existence of other galactic systems at meeting of the American Astronomical Society
1975 – Tiger Woods, son of a African-Caucasian father and a Thai-Chinese and one of the best and most popular golfers in the world, is born.
31st
1972 – Puerto Rican Major League Baseball player Roberto Clemente dies in an airplane crash while delivering humanitarian goods to Nicaragua. He was the first Hispanic player to reach 3,000 hits, including 240 home runs. Clemente also won the Golden Glove Award 12 years straight
2013 – Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the first Latina female in her position, granted an emergency injunction exempting a Catholic charity from Obamacare.