Sudan proclaimed its independence on this day in 1956.
On this day in 1997, Kofi Atta Annan, born in Ghana and working in international affairs, was elected by member states of the United Nations to serve as the new Secretary-General. The position made him the world’s premiere civil servant for peace.
Today is the last day of Kwanzaa, and we focus on Imani. Imani means ‘faith’ in Swahili; faith in our African-ness. The story behind Kwanzaa:
On New Year’s Day in 1863, President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This was a war measure intended to cause confusion in the Southern States. While the Proclamation freed the enslaved in most of the rebel states, it left the system intact within some of those states and in all the Border states (Delaware, Missouri, Maryland, and Kentucky).
On this day in 1804, Jean Jacques Dessalines proclaimed the independence of Haiti.
On this day in 1916, the maiden issue of the Journal of Negro History was published.
The United States passed a federal law on this day in 1808 banning the importation of humans from Africa. It would take another fifty years before enslavement will be finally outlawed.
Robben Island, the isolated prison that housed anti-apartheid activists including Nelson Mandela, was turned into a museum on this day in 1997.
Shirley Anita St. Hill Chisholm, the first Black woman elected to the United States House of Representatives, died on this day in 2005 after a storied political career.
Cameroon became an independent nation on this day in 1960.
William Lloyd Garrison, one of the most ardent anti-slavery advocates, issues the first edition of The Liberator, his journal for abolitionism on this day in 1831.
For the whole of this month, we will have a quote from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
“And you know, my friends, there comes a time when people get tired of being trampled over by the iron feet of oppression. There comes a time, my friends, when people get tired of being plunged across the abyss of humiliation, where they experience the bleakness of nagging despair… And we are not wrong, we are not wrong in what we are doing. If we are wrong, the Supreme Court of this nation is wrong. If we are wrong, the Constitution of the United States is wrong. If we are wrong, God Almighty is wrong. If we are wrong, Jesus of Nazareth was merely a utopian dreamer that never came down to earth. If we are wrong, justice is a lie. Love has no meaning. And we are determined here in Montgomery to work and fight until justice runs down like water, and righteousness like a mighty stream.
From the speech that started it all; Dr. King spoke to nearly 5,000 people at the Holt Street Baptist Church in Montgomery on December 5, 1955.
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