Founded in Baltimore as a school for educating African American teachers, Coppin State College was originally known as Normal College. Today, Coppin State offers a wide variety of degrees and is incorporated in the University System of Maryland.

"Lift Every Voice and Sing," written for an Abraham Lincoln birthday anniversary, is written by brothers J. Rosamond and James Weldon Johnson. The song will later come to be known as the "Negro National Anthem."

Educator Ethel Darden is born in Dallas, Texas.

Social activist Junius "Red" Gaten is born in Amite County, Mississippi.

Famed Train Engineer Casey Jones, later eulogized by the Wallace Saunders song of the same name, dies in a train collision.

Civil War hero Sergeant William H. Carney becomes the first African American to be awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor, thirty-seven years after the Battle of Fort Wagner.

At the convening of the first Pan-African Conference in London, scholar W.E.B. DuBois is named secretary. The goals of the conference included a global sharing of ideas to help improved the situation of black people world-wide.

Black homes and property are destroyed when a race riot erupts in New Orleans, Louisiana.

Bishop James A. Healy died on this date in Portland, Maine. Healy was the first Black Roman Catholic bishop.

Booker T. Washington sponsors the formation of the National Negro Business League, bringing together more than 400 delegates representing black-run businesses in 34 states. The league soon becomes a huge success and counts no less than 320 branches by 1907.

Singer and actress Ethel Waters was born on this date in Chester, Pennsylvania. Some of her film and television credits include Beulah, Cabin in the Sky, and The Sound and the Fury.

Songwriter brothers James Weldon Johnson and J. Rosamond Johnson composed Lift Every Voice and Sing on this date. The song has become the Black National Anthem.

The Washington Society of Colored Dentists was founded on this date in Washington, D.C.