February 23 in Black History

 
1868 — W.E.B. DuBois, educator and civil rights advocate, was born in Great Barrington, Mass.
1869 — Louisiana Gov. Henry Clay Warmoth signed public accommodations legislation, prohibiting excluding passengers from railroads, streetcars, steamboats, coaches or other vehicles based on race.
1895 — AME minister and educator William H. Heard appointed to the position of minister resident/counsul general to Liberia.
1915 — Reconstruction congressman Robert Smalls died in Beaufort, S.C. He was 75.
1925 — Former Detroit mayor and congressman Louis Stokes was born in Cleveland. Stokes was the first African-American elected to the U.S. House of Representatives from Ohio.
1929 — Baseball catcher Elston Gene Howard was born in St. Louis. The first African-American to play for the New York Yankees and first to win American League MVP honors, Howard signed a $70,000 contract with the Yankees on this date in 1965, becoming the highest-paid player in the history of baseball at the time.
1950 — Julius “Dr. J.” Erving was born in Roosevelt, N.Y.
1965 — Constance Baker Motley was elected Manhattan Borough president in New York City, the highest elective office held by an African-American woman in a major American city at the time.
1967 — Adam Clayton Powell Jr. denied his congressional seat.
1979 — Frank E. Peterson named the first African-American general in the United States Marine Corps.
1995 — Melvin “Blue” Franklin of The Temptations died of complications following a seizure in Los Angeles. He was 53.
2008 — Johnnie Rebecca Carr dies at the age of 97. Carr formed the Montgomery Improvement Association after Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to forfeit a bus seat to a white man.