The Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, the trailblazing black labor union, was organized by A. Philip Randolph.

On May 8, 2009, Ronald Cordell Sims became the Deputy Secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.  Sims now second-in-command of the federal agency will oversee day-to-day operations of the Department which has an annual budget of $39 billion and some 8,500 employees.  A long time champion of environmental stewardship and mass transit, he will now confront the national foreclosure crisis among other housing issues.  

Ronald C. Sims, a twin, was born on July 5, 1948, in Spokane, Washington, to James M. Sims and Lydia T. Ramsey Sims.  During World War II his parents had moved from Newark, New Jersey, to Spokane’s Geiger Air Field, where his father served in Army Air Force.

After graduating from Lewis and Clark High School in 1966, Sims attended Central Washington State College (now Central Washington University).  While in college he became politically engaged as a columnist for the student newspaper.  He wrote articles that challenged many of the policies of school officials.   His activism contributed to his election as vice president of the student body in his junior year, and in his final year of college, the student body president.

Sims graduated from college in 1971 with a bachelor’s degree in psychology and then moved to Seattle.  He held a series of local, state, and federal government positions.  His first position was as an investigator with the consumer-protection division of the Washington State Attorney’s office.  Later he held a similar post with the Federal Trade Commission.  In 1979 he became the manager of youth services for the City of Seattle’s Department of Human Resources.  Sims later became the director of the South East Effective Development (SEED), a community based organization that advocated economic development and social justice in southeast Seattle.

Ron Sims began his political career in 1985 when he became the first African American elected to the King County Council. While on the Council, Sims promoted civil rights issues including lobbying for the

Black Nationalist, repatriationist, and minister, Henry M. Turner was 31 years old at the time of the Emancipation. Turner was born in 1834 in Newberry Courthouse, South Carolina to free black parents Sarah Greer and Hardy Turner. The self-taught Turner by the age of fifteen worked as a janitor at a law firm in Abbeville, South Carolina. The firm’s lawyers noted his abilities and helped with his education. However, Turner was attracted to the church and after being converted during a Methodist religious revival, decided to become a minister. He joined the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church and became a licensed minister in 1853 at the age of 19. Turner soon became an itinerant evangelist traveling as far as New Orleans, Louisiana. By 1856 he married Eliza Peacher, the daughter of a wealthy African American house builder in Columbia, South Carolina. The couple had fourteen children but only four of them survived into adulthood.

In 1858 Turner entered Trinity College in Baltimore, Maryland where he studied Latin, Greek, Hebrew and theology. Two years later he became the pastor of the Union Bethel Church in Washington, D.C. Turner cultivated friendships with important Republican Congressional figures including Ohio Congressman Benjamin Wade, Pennsylvania Congressman Thaddeus Stevens, and Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner. Turner had already become a national figure when in 1863 at the age of 29 he was appointed by President Lincoln to the position of Chaplain in the Union Army. Turner was attached to 1st Regiment, U.S. Colored Troops, making him the first African American chaplain in the history of the United States Army.

After the Civil War, Turner returned to Georgia and quickly became active in Reconstruction-era politics. In 1867 he organized for the Republican Party in Georgia and the following year was elected a delegate to the Georgia State Constitutional Convention. In the same year he was also elected to the Georgia State Legislature. Although 27 African Americans were elected

John Brown held antislavery convention, which was attended by twelve whites and thirty-four Blacks, at Chatham, Canada. The Escape, first play by an American Black, Published by William Wells Brown.

May 8 marks the massacre at Setif, Algeria which took place in 1945. The French troops left one of the unforgettable memories of the Algerian peoples struggle, 45,000 dead

West Africa, also called Western Africa and the West of Africa, is the westernmost subregion of Africa. West Africa has been defined as including 18 countries: Benin, Burkina Faso, the island nation of Cape Verde, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Ivory Coast, Liberia, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, the island of Saint Helena, Senegal, Sierra Leone, São Tomé and Príncipe and Togo.[7] The population of West Africa is estimated at about 362 million[2] people as of 2016. Islam is the predominant religion of 70% of the population, with smaller amounts practicing Christianity and Traditional African religions.

Main article: History of West Africa

The history of West Africa can be divided into five major periods: first, its prehistory, in which the first human settlers arrived, developed agriculture, and made contact with peoples to the north; the second, the Iron Age empires that consolidated both intra-Africa, and extra-Africa trade, and developed centralized states; third, major polities flourished, which would undergo an extensive history of contact with non-Africans; fourth, the colonial period, in which Great Britain and France controlled nearly the entire region; and fifth, the post-independence era, in which the current nations were formed.

Prehistory [ edit ]

Early human settlers from northern Holocene societies arrived in West Africa around 12,000 B.C.[dubious – discuss] Sedentary farming began in, or around the fifth millennium B.C, as well as the domestication of cattle. By 1500 B.C, ironworking technology allowed an expansion of agricultural productivity, and the first city-states later formed. Northern tribes developed walled settlements and non-walled settlements that numbered at 400. In the forest region, Iron Age cultures began to flourish, and an inter-region trade began to appear. The desertification of the Sahara and the climatic change of the coast cause trade with upper Mediterranean peoples to be seen.

The domestication of the camel allowed the development of a trans-Saharan trade

Truganini dies in Hobart aged 73. The Tasmanian Government does not recognise the Aboriginal heritage of people of Aboriginal descent and claims the last Tasmanian Aboriginal person has died. A falsehood many still believe today.

President Eisenhower ordered federalized National Guard removed from Central High School, Little Rock.

Death of Henry McNeal Turner (82), first Black chaplain in the U.S. Army and AME bishop.

Germany surrendered on V-E Day.

Carole Anne-Marie Gist, the first African American woman to win the Miss USA title, was born on May 8, 1969 in Detroit, Michigan.

Heavyweight boxer Charles Sonny Liston born in St. Francis, County, Arkansas. Liston had 54 fights, including a 1962 bout in which he knocked out Floyd Patterson to win the World Heavyweight Title.

Mary Lou Williams was born Mary Elfrieda Scruggs on May 8, 1910.In a remarkably productive career that spanned a half century, Mary Lou Williams established herself as a pianist, composer and arranger, an unprecedented feat that has remained an inspiration to women in jazz. While she is widely regarded as one of the greatest female jazz musicians ever, her long list of accomplishments is impressive by any measure.