President James A. Garfield appoints Frederick Douglass Recorder of Deeds for Washington, D.C.

Former Mississippi Senator Blanche K. Bruce was appointed Registrar of the U.S. Treasury on this date. Bruce was also the first Black to serve a full-term as U.S. Senator.

Henry Highland Garnet, who gained fame as the first African American to speak before Congress, is appointed U.S. Minster to Liberia. He passes away in Monrovia, Liberia less than a year later.

Thirty students enroll in the Tuskegee Normal and Industiral Institute in Tuskegee Alabama. The school was founded by Booker T. Washington as a place where African Americans with little or no education could be educated as teachers or industrial workers.

Spelman College in Atlanta, Georgia opens the first nursing school for African Americans.

Lewis Latimer, the only African American member of Thomas Edison's team of inventors, and Joseph Nichols patent an electric lamp with an inexpensive and long-lasting carbon filament.

Tuskegee Institute opened on this date in Alabama. The school opened with thirty students and one instructor, Booker T. Washington.

Inventor Payton Johnson patented his swinging chair on this date.