Bandung Conference of leaders of colored nations of Africa and Asia opened in Indonesia.

Gwen Moore was born April 18, 1951 in Racine, Wisconsin and raised in Milwaukee.

Dr. Levi Watkins, Jr. was a cardiac surgeon who, in 1980, performed the first implantation of an automatic defibrillator into a human heart. He was also a professor of cardiac surgery and associate dean at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in Baltimore, Maryland.

Watkins was born in Parsons, Kansas, but grew up in Montgomery, Alabama. He attended the First Baptist Church, and became close friends with the Pastor, Dr. Ralph David Abernathy. He later attended the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, where he met Dr. Martin Luther King, who had recently begun preaching there. Inspired by King, and dismayed at the prejudices of Jim Crow Alabama, Watkins became involved in the civil rights movement. He joined the King-supervised Crusaders youth group and drove parishioners to the church in a station wagon so they could boycott the city’s segregated bus system in 1956.

Watkins entered Tennessee State University in 1962. He eventually became president of the student body, majored in biology, and graduated with honors in 1966. That May, he became the first African American admitted to the Vanderbilt School of Medicine in Nashville. Studying at Vanderbilt was a lonely, isolating experience, and when King was murdered in 1968, Watkins was still the only black student at the school. Despite the prejudice he encountered there, he in 1970 became the first African American to graduate from Vanderbilt.

Later that year Watkins moved to Baltimore, where he became the first black intern at Johns Hopkins University Medical School. Between 1973 and 1975, he studied at Harvard Medical School’s Department of Physiology, performing breakthrough research into the role of the renin angiotensin system in congestive heart failure. When he returned to Johns Hopkins in 1975, he became the first black chief resident in heart surgery at the university.

Watkins performed the first implantation of an automatic defibrillator in February 1980. Joining a team working on the device that included Michel Mirowksi, Morton Mower, and William Staewen,

During the Civil War Northerners organized sanitary fairs to raise funds on behalf of the United States Sanitary Commission, a charitable relief organization which promoted the welfare of Union Soldiers.  President Abraham Lincoln addressed one such fair in Baltimore, Maryland on April 18, 1864.  The President noted that already one of the unintended consequences of the Civil War was the liberation of millions of slaves.  He reminded his audience that while both those who sought to free the slaves and those who wanted to keep them in bondage, used the word “liberty” to define their efforts, their understanding of the word itself and the outcomes they sought were radically different.  He also used the speech to publicly address for the first time the recent massacre of black and white Union soldiers at Fort Pillow, Tennessee.

Ladies and Gentlemen—Calling to mind that we are in Baltimore, we can not fail to note that the world moves. Looking upon these many people, assembled here, to serve, as they best may, the soldiers of the Union, it occurs at once that three years ago, the same soldiers could not so much as pass through Baltimore. The change from then till now, is both great, and gratifying. Blessings on the brave men who have wrought the change, and the fair women who strive to reward them for it.

But Baltimore suggests more than could happen within Baltimore. The change within Baltimore is part only of a far wider change. When the war began, three years ago, neither party, nor any man, expected it would last till now. Each looked for the end, in some way, long [before] today. Neither did any anticipate that domestic slavery would be much affected by the war. But here we are; the war has not ended, and slavery has been much affected—how much needs not now to be recounted. So true is it that man proposes, and God disposes.

But we can see the past, though we may not claim to have directed it; and seeing it, in this case, we feel more hopeful and confident for the future.

The world has never had a good

Dr. Robert Weaver named director of Office of Production Management section charged with integrating Blacks into the National Defense Program.

Reggae singer, Robert Nesta Marley, performs at Zimbabwe Independence Celebration

Zimbabwe, Independence Day

José Mauricio Nunes Garcia (1767-1830) was an Afro-Brazilian composer and organist who was the grandson of slaves. Over 240 works of music by Garcia have survived. Garcias mother was Vitória Maria da Cruz and his father was Apolinário Nunes Garcia, a tailor. Garcia was born in Rio de Janeiro on September 22, 1767. Salvador José de Almeida e Faria taught the youth music. A biographer, Manuel de Araújo Porto Alegre, wrote that Garcia sang beautifully, wrote music, and played the harpsichord and guitar without lessons. The biographer adds that Garcia taught music from age 12, and was educated in the Royal Classes.

Garcia wrote his earliest surviving work, “Tota pulchra Es Maria,” in 1783. He studied for the the priesthood where he collaborated with Lopes Ferreira, the chapel master. Garcia joined the brotherhood of Saint Cecilia as a music teacher in 1784. He wrote “Litany for Our Lady in 4 voices and organ.”  By 1788 he was composing anthems and acapella works for church services and two years later gained fame with his “Funeral Symphony.” Garcia was ordained as a priest in March, 1792. When the chapel master died in 1797, Garcia succeeded him.

When the Portuguese Royal Family took refuge in Brazil in March 1808, clerics who accompanied them tried to remove Garcia from his position because of his race. Garcia was then told to concentrate on composition. His works that year included the “Missa Pastoril,” the “Requiem Mass” and the “Officium for the Dead”.

A Royal wedding in 1817 gave Garcia the opportunity to compose “12 Divertimenti” for the ceremony. In that year Garcia composed the first Brazilian opera, “Le Due Gemelle” (“The Two Twins”), which was destroyed by fire in 1825. Monteiro Neto also tells us that in December 1819 Garcia conducted the first Brazilian performance of Mozarts “Requiem” (K 626). His last work was the “St. Cecilias Mass.” José Mauricio Nunes Garcia died on April 18, 1830.

Abele died of a heart attack in his hometown of Philadelphia on April 18, 1950, three days before his 69th birthday.

Caetano da Costa Alegre , (born April 26, 1864, São Tomé, Portuguese Africa—died April 18, 1890, Alcobaça, Port.), first significant black African poet writing in Portuguese to deal with the theme of blackness. He was the literary ancestor to the later, more vehement modern poets.

Alegre was born into a creole family but moved in 1882 to Portugal, where he enrolled in the Medical School of Lisbon. Before he could graduate and fulfill his desire to become a doctor in the navy, however, he died of tuberculosis at the age of 26. It was not until 1916 that his friend, the journalist Cruz Magalhães, collected and published Alegre’s poetry as Versos.

Colour dominates the poetry of Alegre. Rejected by a Portuguese woman whom he loved, he laments his blackness, yet he exalts black women. In one of his more famous poems, he confesses “My colour is black / It stands for mourning and grief.” He misses his island home and his African heritage. Time and again he expresses his racial alienation and his personal suffering, but at times he does so with ironic self-mockery. Technically, Alegre’s poetry is rooted in the Romantic mode that dominated much 19th-century Portuguese verse. Using traditional imagery of the time, the lyrical poet in his works compares love to a rose and his beloved to a dove. He chooses the sonnet form in such poems as “Aurora” and “Longe,” and his personal, confessional style is far removed from traditional African oral poetry. Nevertheless, Alegre is an African poet who contributed greatly to the development of the literature of São Tomé in particular and Portuguese-speaking Africa in general. His psychological insight, his willingness to see blackness as a serious literary subject, and his remembering of happy times in the tropical land of his birth are qualities adopted by later novelists and poets.

Andrew Jackson defeated force of Indians and Blacks at Battle of Suwanee, ending First Seminole War.

Alex Haley, author of Roots was awarded Pultizer Prize.

Independence Day in Zimbabwe. Black and white Minutemen fought British soldiers at Lexington and Concord.

Prime Minister Antoine Gizenga resigned in September 2008, citing health reasons. He was succeeded by Adolphe Muzito.

Presidential elections were held in November 2011. Incumbent Kabila faced opposition leader and former prime minister Étienne Tshisekedi. The International Crisis Group deemed the election unruly and chaotic and other international observers said the vote was irregular and flawed. Nearly 20 people were killed in election-related violence. Nevertheless, Congos election commission ruled in December that Kabila prevailed, 49% to 32%. In the run-up to the election, Kabila—perhaps sensing a threat from the opposition and popular dissatisfaction with his rule—amended the constitution to do away with a second round of voting and stacked the electoral commission.

In March 2012, Prime Minister Adolphe Muzito resigned. His resignation came a little over three months after the violent presidential elections. Deputy Prime Minister Louis Koyagialo was appointed to temporarily replace Muzito. On April 18, 2012, former Minister of Finance Augustin Matata Ponyo Mapon was named prime minister.

Nicholas Biddle becomes the first African American in uniform to be wounded in the Civil War

The American Nicodemus Town Company is founded by six African American settlers in northwestern Kansas. The town will be settled later in the year.

Shirley was born on April 18, 1934 in Indianapolis, Indiana.

Bill Russell named coach of the Boston Celtics basketball team and became the first Black to coach an established team in professional athletics.

In 1931 twelve year old Thomas J. Pressly witnessed the lynching of George Smith in Union City, the county seat of Obion County, Tennessee.  Now a University of Washington historian and Professor Emeritus, Dr. Pressley describes that lynching in the article below.   

When I was twelve years old, I saw the body of a young black man hanging from the limb of a tree where he had been hung several hours earlier. The lynching had taken place in April, 1931, in Union City, the county seat, of Obion County, in Northwestern Tennessee, not too far from the Kentucky line to the north, and from the Mississippi River to the west.

I lived in Troy, Tennessee, a town of five hundred inhabitants, ten miles. south of Union City. On the morning of April 18, 1931, a friend of mine in Troy, Hal Bennet, five or six years older than I, told me that he had to drive his car to Union City to purchase some parts for the car, and he asked if I wanted to go along for the ride. I was not old enough to drive, and I was happy to accept his invitation. Neither Hal not I had heard anything about a lynching in Union City, but when we entered town, we soon passed the Court House and saw that the grounds were filled with people and that the black mans body was hanging from the tree.

We were told by people in the crowd that the lynched man was in his early twenties, and that on the previous night, he had entered the bedroom and clutched the neck of a young lady prominent as a singer and pianist, the main entertainer at the new radio station recently established in Union City as the first station in Obion County. The young lady said she had fought off her attacker and severely scratched his face before he fled from her house. Within hours the sheriff and his deputy, using bloodhounds, had tracked down a black man who had scratches on his face. They then brought him before the young woman who identified him as her assailant. Convinced he had the attacker, the sheriff put him in the jail, which occupied the top floor of the Court House. Before

Alice Walker is awarded the Pulitzer Prize for The Color Purple. Ten days later the novel will also win the American Book Award for fiction.

Surrounded by a superior rebel force, First Kansas Colored Volunteers smashed through rebel lines and sustained heavy casualties in an engagement at Poison Spring, Arkansas. Captured Black soldiers were murdered by the Confederate troops.

Death of Percy Julian (76), holder of more than 138 chemical patents, and a pioneer synthesizer of cortisone drugs.

James B. Parsons named chief judge of the Federal District Court in Chicago and became the first Black to hold that position.