JUNE
1st
In 1843, Sojourner Truth left New York to begin her career as an antislavery activist.
In 1868, the Treaty of Bosque Redondo between the United States and many of the Navajo leaders was signed allowing the Navajos to return to part of their homelands in Arizona and New Mexico.
2nd
In 1875, James Augustine Healey became the first Black Catholic Bishop in the United States.
In 1924, the Indian Citizenship Act, or the Snyder Act, was signed granting full citizenship to America’s indigenous peoples, called “Indians” in this Act.
3rd
In 1949, Wesley Anthony Brown was the first African American to graduate from the U.S. Naval Academy.
In 1972, Sally Jan Priesand was ordained a rabbi thus becoming the first woman rabbi in the United States.
4th
In 1919, the Senate passed the Women’s Suffrage bill, the Nineteenth Amendment that prohibits any United States citizen from being denied the right to vote on the basis of sex.
In 1974, Sally Murphy became the first woman to qualify as an aviator (pilot) with the U.S. Army.
5th
In 1956, the Federal Court ruled racial segregation on Montgomery buses as anti-Constitutional.
In 1991, Lesbian priest Elizabeth Carl was ordained in an Episcopal Church in Washington DC.
6th
In 1872, Susan B. Anthony, a pioneering feminist, was fined for voting in a presidential election in Rochester, New York, which then pushed her to lead a group of women to fight for women’s rights.
In 1921, Detroit Stars’ Bill Gatewood pitched the first no-hitter in Negro League history.
7th
In 1929, Margaret Bondfield became the first Dutch female minister of Labor.
In 1953, Mary Terrell won the struggle to end segregation in Washington D.C. restaurants.
8th
In 1892, Homer A. Plessy refused to go onto the segregated Railroad Car, which eventually lead to the United States Supreme Court decision in Plessy v. Ferguson.
In 1948, John Rudder became the first Negro commissioned officer in the U.S. Marines.
9th
In 1909, Alice Huyler Ramsey, a 22-year-old housewife and mother from Hackensack, New Jersey, became the first woman to drive across the USA, driving a Maxwell automobile 3,800 miles from Manhattan to San Francisco in 59 days with three non-driving female companions.
In 1949, Mrs. Georgia Neese Clark of Kansas became the first woman treasurer of the United States.
10th
African American actress Hattie McDaniel was born in 1889 in Wichita, Kansas. She won an Academy Award in 1940 for her role as “Mammy” in Gone with the Wind.
In 1963, U.S. President JFK signs law for equal pay for equal work for men and women.
11th
American feminist and politician Jeanette Rankin was born in 1880 in Missoula, Montana. She was the first woman elected to the U.S. Congress.
In 1911, Marcus Garvey founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association.
12th
In 1963, civil rights leader Medgar Evers was assassinated in Jackson, Mississippi by a rifle bullet from an ambush. He had been active in seeking integration of schools and voter registration for African Americans in the South.
In 1967, the United States Supreme Court unanimously ended laws against interracial marriages.
13th
Red Earth Native American Fair – Over 150 Native tribes from the U.S. and Canada gather in Oklahoma City to share their heritage through drums, art, and dance.
In 1967, President Lyndon Johnson nominated Solicitor General Thurgood Marshal to become the first black Supreme Court Justice.
14th
American writer Harriet Beecher Stowe was born in 1811 in Litchfield, Connecticut. She wrote Uncle Tom’s Cabin, an anti-slavery novel containing vivid descriptions of the sufferings and oppression of African Americans.
Photojournalist Margaret Bourke-White was born in 1906 in New York City. She was the first woman to become an accredited war correspondent during World War II.
15th
In 1876, Sara Spencer was the first woman to address a United States presidential convention.
Native American Citizenship Day commemorates the day in 1924 when the U.S. Congress passed legislation recognizing the citizenship of Native Americans.
16th
American author and photograph John Griffin was born in 1920 in Dallas, Texas. He darkened his white skin using chemicals and ultraviolet light, then kept a journal on his experiences while posing as an African American traveling through the deep South. The journal was published as the book, Black Like Me
In 1963, Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman in space as her Soviet spacecraft, Vostok 6, took off from the Tyuratam launch site.
17th
In 1824, the Bureau of Indian Affairs was established.
In 1928, Amelia Earhart left Newfoundland and became the first woman passenger to fly over the Atlantic in a plane piloted by Wilmer Stultz.
18th
In 1942, Bernard W. Robinson became the first African American officer of the U.S. Navy.
In 1983, Dr. Sally Ride, a 32-year-old physicist and pilot, became the first American woman in space, beginning a six-day mission aboard the space shuttle Challenger, launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida.
19th
Junteenth, also known as National Freedom Day, is considered the official end of slavery in the United States. In 1862, Congress prohibited slavery in all current and future United States territories.
In 1926, DeFord Bailey was the first African American to perform on Nashville’s Grand Ole Opry.
20th
In 1895, Caroline Willard Baldwin was the first female to earn a PhD from an American University.
In 1901, Charlotte M. Manye was the first native African to graduate from a United States college.
21st
In 1913, Tiny Broadwick was the first woman to parachute from an airplane.
In 1942, Steinheuer threw the female world record spear for a distance of 47.24m.
22nd
In 1943, W.E.B. Du Bois became the first African American member of the National Institute of Letters.
In 1966, South African Bishop Alphaeus Hamilton Zulu was refused a passport and thus permission to attend an international church conference by the South African government.
23rd
In 1888, Frederick Douglass was the first African American nominated for president.
In 1949, the first twelve women graduated from Harvard Medical School.
24th
In 1884, John Lynch was the first African American elected as chairman of the Republican convention.
In 1916, Mary Pickford became the first female film star to get a million dollar contract.
25th
In 1876, General George A. Custer and 250 of his men attacked an encampment of Sioux Indians near Little Bighorn River in Montana. 2,000-4,000 Indian braves fought back which resulted in the survival of only one scout and a single horse. This infuriated the Americans, which led to another war that destroyed the nation of the Sioux Indians.
In 1964, Prince A. Taylor became the first black Methodist bishop in New Jersey.
26th
In 1964, blacks and whites rioted over racial segregation in St. Augustine.
In 1975, two FBI agents and a member of the American Indian Movement were killed in a shootout on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. Leonard Peltier was later convicted of the murders in a controversial trial.
27th
In 1833, Prudence Crandall, a white woman, was arrested for conducting an academy for black females at Canterbury Connecticut.
In 1980, thirty women in New Jersey graduated from the first all female State Police class in the nation.
28th
German-American physicist Maria Goeppert Mayer was born in 1906 in Kattowitz, Germany. She became the first American woman to win the Nobel Prize, sharing the 1963 prize for physics for works explaining atomic nuclei, known as the nuclear shell theory.
In 1976, the first woman was admitted to the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colorado.
29th
Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender (LGBT) Pride Day
In 1990, Dr. Penny Jamieson was the world’s first female diocesan Anglican bishop appointed in New Zealand.
30th
In 1870, Ada Kepley became the first female law college graduate.
In 1951, the NAACP begins attack on school segregation and discrimination.