Historian, storyteller and government executive William Layton is born in Hanover, Virginia.

Historian and educator Florida Jackson Yeldell is born in Georgetown, South Carolina.

John Hope Franklin is born in Rentriesville, Oklahoma. He will go on to lead the way in the study of African American life and history.

Classical conductor Dean Dixon is born in Harlem, New York. At the unprecedented age of twenty-five he conducts the New York Chamber Orchestra while still a student at Juliard. Leaving for Europe in 1949, he will serve as the director of the Goteborg Symphony in Sweden for ten years before being named director of the Hessian Radio Symphony in Frankfurt, Germany.

Educator and arts advocate Rhoda Louise Kent-Hope was born on this date in Newton, Kansas.

National Urban League executive Mahlon Puryear is born in Winston Salem, North Carolina.

The NAACP leads a protest against the film, "The Birth of a Nation", which glorified the Ku Klux Klan.

Gospel singer "Sister" Rosetta Tharpe was born on this date in Cotton Plant, Arkansas.

Blues guitarist Robert Lockwood, Jr. is born in Turkey Scratch, Arkansas.

Coach John B. McLendon, Jr. was born on this date in Hiawatha, Kansas. McLendon was the first Black coach hired by a predominantly White university (Cleveland State) in 1966. He developed fastbreak basketball and became the first Black to be a part of an Olympic basketball team's coaching staff. He had a career coaching record of 523 wins and 165 losses.

Legendary jazz singer Billie Holiday is born Eleanor Fagan in Baltimore, Maryland. As a child, she is dubbed Billie because of her boyish demeanor.

Printmaker and sculptor Elizabeth Catlett was born on this date in Washington, D.C.

Motown Etiquette Director Maxine Powell is born.

In Frank Guinn and J.J. Beal v. United States, the United States Supreme Court hands down a decision that declares "grandfather clauses" used by Southern states to disenfranchise blacks to be unconstitutional.

Railroad Chef Boots Shepard is born.

Reverend Joseph H. Evans was born on this date in Kalamazoo, Michigan.

Real estate entrepreneur David A. Smith is born on this date in Clinton, Louisiana.

Massachusetts public official and justice, Hon. Herbert E. Tucker, Jr. is born in Boston.

Civil rights activist Evangeline Hall is born in DeLand, Florida.

Professor Carter G. Woodson, who holds a doctorate from Harvard University, founds the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History.

Xavier College in New Orleans, Louisiana, becomes the first African American Catholic college.

Radio personality and promoter Hal Jackson is born in Charleston, South Carolina.

Booker T. Washington, renowned spokesman and intellectual, dies of natural causes. Born a slave in 1856, Washington went on to earn his degree at Hampton Institute in Hampton, Virginia. He began work at the Tuskegee Institute in 1881 and built it into a center of African American education.

The classic film by D.W. Griffith, Birth of a Nation, sparks opposition from the NAACP and other civil rights groups for its racist portrayal of blacks in the Reconstructionist South. The outcry over the film includes a commitment on the part of black businessmen to finance the nascent African American film industry

Jazz composer, arranger, and pianist William "Billy" Strayhorn was born on this date in Dayton, Ohio. Strayhorn collaborated with Duke Ellington numerous times and make great tunes like Take the A-Train.

Artist LeRoy Winbush is born in Memphis, Tennessee.

Jack Johnson becomes the World Heavy Weight Boxing Champion.