Famed musician Dizzy Gillespie passes away on this day.

Thurgood Marshall, the first African American Supreme Court Justice, dies. He was sworn in on October, 2, 1967 and served for twenty-four years before his retirement in 1991.

Arthur Ashe, the star tennis player who in 1975 became the first African American to win the Wimbledon championship, dies in New York City of AIDS-related pneumonia. He was forty-nine years old.

New York City declares an eighteenth century black burial ground in lower Manhattan an historical landmark. The cemetery, which is discovered during construction of a federal office building, contains the remains of over four hundred slaves. The bones are turned over to anthropologists at Howard University for closer study.

Dr. David Satcher is appointed director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the first African American to hold this position. He later goes on to be named Surgeon General of the United States.

Opera singer Marian Anderson died on this date in Oregon. She was the first African American to sing on the stage of the New York Metropolitan Opera House. She lived to be 96 years old.

Benjamin Chavis, a scholar and civil rights activist who spent four years in prison in the late 1970s as a member of the falsely accused "Wilmington Ten," is nominated Director of the NAACP.

Rita Dove is appointed U.S. Poet Laureate becoming the first African American female poet to serve in this honorary office.

NBA All-Star Reggie Lewis died from complications with his heart on this date. Lewis played for the Boston Celtics and was inducted into pro basketball's Hall of Fame in 1995.

Toni Morrison is awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature becoming the first African American to win the highest literary honor in the world.

Hale House founder Clara "Mother" Hale died on this date in Harlem, New York. "Mother" Hale established Hale House as a childcare agency to care for drug addicted and HIV-infected babies in the Harlem community. "Mother" Hale's daughter took over the agency when "Mother" Hale passed away.