Scientist Garrett A. Morgan was born in Paris, Kentucky. Inventor of a belt fastener for sewing machines, the gas mask, and the automatic traffic signal, he sold rights to General Electric for $40,000.

At the turn of the century Bert Williams was one of Americas top comedians. Comedian Eddie Cantor called him a comic genius, W.C. Fields, a comic genius himself, once described Williams as the funniest man I ever saw.

Williams was the first Negro to make it on the American stage. His success opened the door to scores of Negroe comedians who came after him.

Williams popularity lasted for 25 years. He was a Ziegfeld Follies star for 10 of them. He also was a vaudeville comedian, a musical comedy star, singer, writer and producer.

Egbert Austin Williams was born on the Bahaman island of New Providence in 1876 and was brought by his parents to the United States at the age of 2. The family eventually settled in Riverside, California, where Williams was reared and schooled. After high school, he briefly studied civil engineering in San Francisco, soon abandoning that for the stage.

Williams joined a small minstrel troupe which played the mining and lumber camps of CA and Oregon. In 1895 he met another young African American, George Walker and their forturnes became intertwined. the two men formed a team and hitthe vaudeville circuit.

Williams and Walker appeared as black-face comedians in 1896 at Tony Pastors and in 1897 at Koster and Bials theaters--both leading houses on the vaudeville circuit.

Williams and Walker opened in The Song of Ham in 1902. A musical farce, it played New York for two years. In 1903, they produced an all-Negro musical coomedy, in Dahomey, which captivated broadway and played in London for eitht months, including a command performance before King Edward VII. the two comedians followed this up with three or four similiar musicals which also were successes.

Walker died in 1909 and Williams gave up producing to become a featured performer in otherwise all-white Broadway productions. In 1910, he signed a long-term contract at a salary in four figures with the Ziegfeld Follies. He frequently wrote his own songs and skits.

Williams stayed with the follies until 1921. He was

President Eisenhower named J. Earnest Wilkins of Chicago assistant secretary of labor.

Term of George H. White, last of post-Reconstruction congressmen, ended at noon.

Jeremiah Haralson was born near Columbus, Georgia on April 1, 1846. The slave of Georgia planter John Haralson, he was taken to Alabama where he remained in bondage until 1865. It is unclear as to what he did in the earlier years of his freedom, but there are records that suggest he may have been a farmer and clergyman. Haralson taught himself to read and write and later became a skilled orator and debater.

In 1868, Haralson made his first unsuccessful attempt for a seat in the Forty-first Congress, representing Alabama’s First District of Alabama.  Two years later he won a seat in Alabama’s House of Representatives and in 1872 was elected to the State Senate.  In 1874 Haralson again ran for the U.S. House of Representatives.  Haralson narrowly won the Republican primary over Liberal Republican Frederick G. Bromberg.  Soon after the primary Bromberg accused Haralson of voter fraud and sought to deny him his seat.  The Democrats who controlled the U.S. House of Representatives supported Haralson and on March 4, 1875 he took his seat in Congress.   

Congressman Jeremiah Haralson supported the policies of President Ulysses Grant and urged black voters to remain loyal to the Republican Party.  Appointed to the House Committee on Public expenditures, he introduced legislation to use proceeds from public land sales for educational purposes and for the relief of the Medical College of Alabama. Haralson broke with other Republican-era black Congressmen by criticizing the use of federal soldiers to control violence and ensure orderly voting in the South.  He also favored general amnesty for former Confederates.

In 1876 Haralson stood for election in the newly created, predominately black Fourth Congressional District.  This district was already represented by black Congressman James T. Rapier.  Both he and Haralson ran in the Republican Primary.  Haralson won the primary but lost narrowly to Democrat Charles M. Shelley.  Haralson contested the results before the House of Representatives but on this occasion, the

1932: Zensi

Miriam

Makeba,

Empress of

African

Song, is

born.

Ida Gray Nelson Rollins, the first African American Woman dentist, was born in Clarksville, Tennessee, on March 4, 1867.

Lionel Wilson, lawyer, judge, and politician, was born in New Orleans, Louisiana on March 4, 1915 to Jules and Louise Wilson.

Independence

Day -

Republic of

Senegal.

Forty-second Congress convened (1871-73) with five Black congressmen: Joseph H. Rainey, Robert Carlos Delarge and Robert Brown Elliott,South Carolina; Benjamin S. Turner, Alabama; Josiah T. Walls, Florida. Walls was elected in an at-large election and was the first Black congressman to represent an entire state.

Draymond Jamal Green, Sr. is a professonal basketball player with the National Basketball Association (NBA). He is currently playing with the Golden State (California) Warriors.  Green was born on March 4, 1990, in Saginaw, Michigan to Mary Babers and Wallace Davis. Green was raised by his stepfather, Raymond Green, and took his name. Green had two brothers and three sisters, Torrian Harris, Braylon Green, LaToya Barbers, Jordan Davis, and Gabby Davis.

Draymond Green attended Saginaw High School in Saginaw, Michigan where he played for the high school basketball team. He helped lead the team to two Class A State Championships. After graduating from high school in 2008, Green attended Michigan State University in East Lansing, Michigan where he played for the Michigan State Spartans men’s basketball team.  Unlike many of his NBA colleagues, Green played all four years of his eligibility with the Spartans.  During those years he was named Big Ten Player of the Year, First team All Big Ten, and Consensus first-team All-American. After his senior year, Green considered himself eligible for the NBA draft.

In the 2012 NBA Draft, Green was selected as the 35th overall pick by the Golden State Warriors. Since becoming part of the Warriors team, Green has established himself as an elite three-point shooter and player alongside Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson. During his years with the Warriors, Green has become a two-time NBA All-Star, All-NBA second team, All-NBA first team, and two-time NBA All-Defensive First Team.

Green was part of the Warriors team that in the NBA 2015 National Championship defeated the Cleveland (Ohio) Cavaliers, led by LeBron James, Kyrie Irving, and Kevin Love in six games.  Green helped win the first Warriors NBA championship since 1975. The success of Green and the Warriors continued into the following season which Green made it to his first NBA All-Star game and the team itself generated a record setting 73-9 win-loss regular season, the best in NBA history.

The Warriors returned to the NBA

Fifty-first Congress convened. Three Black congressmen: Henry P. Cheatham, North Carolina; Thomas E. Miller, South Carolina; John M. Langston, Virginia.

Willie Covan, one of the first successful tap dancers is born

Harry A. Blackmun , in full Harry Andrew Blackmun (born Nov. 12, 1908, Nashville, Ill., U.S.—died March 4, 1999, Arlington, Va.), associate justice of the United States Supreme Court from 1970 to 1994.

Blackmun graduated in mathematics from Harvard University in 1929 and received his law degree from that institution in 1932. He joined a Minneapolis, Minnesota, law firm in 1934, and while advancing to general partner in the firm he also taught at the St. Paul College of Law (1935–41). In 1950 he became resident counsel for the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, and held this post until 1959, when he was appointed a judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals by President Dwight D. Eisenhower.

In 1970, after two of his previous nominees had been rejected by the Senate as unqualified, President Richard M. Nixon named Blackmun to the Supreme Court. Blackmun was unanimously confirmed by the Senate and took his seat in June 1970. On the court he joined his close friend from childhood, Chief Justice Warren E. Burger. He was expected to vote as a conservative constitutionalist, and for the first few years of his judgeship he did just that, voting in line with court conservatives.

In 1973, however, he wrote the court’s majority decision in Roe v. Wade, the landmark case in which a woman’s right to terminate a pregnancy was guaranteed under the constitutional right to privacy. While the decision cannot be construed as legally conservative, in that the case made law in an area (abortion rights) in which the Supreme Court had rarely before issued an opinion, it can be seen as politically conservative, in that it followed from Blackmun’s deeply held belief in a citizen’s right to privacy without governmental interference. Although there were six justices who joined with Blackmun in the majority opinion of Roe v. Wade, Blackmun was linked with and characterized by that decision for the rest of his career.

At times, Blackmun’s dissenting opinions became just as important to the legal debate on individual liberty as were his

Jean-Joseph Rabéarivelo , (born March 4, 1901, Tananarive, Madagascar—died June 22, 1937, Tananarive), Malagasy writer, one of the most important of African poets writing in French, considered to be the father of modern literature in his native land.

Garrett Morgan was born on March 4, 1877 in Paris, Kentucky the seventh of 11 children born to Sydney and Elizabeth Morgan.

Martin Luther King, Jr. announced plans for Poor Peoples Campaign in Washington. He said he would lead a massive civil disobedience campaign in the capital to pressure the government to provide jobs and income for all Americans. He told a press conference that an army of poor white, poor Blacks and Hispanics would converge on Washington on April 20 and would demonstrate until their demands were met.

Weekly Advocate changed its name to the Colored American, the second major Black newspaper. Some forty Black newspapers were published before the Civil War.

Southern states believed the election of Lincoln as president meant the end to slavery. Immediately after the election in Novembet 1860, several states began holding conventions and debate secession from the Union. Before Lincoln took office on March 4, 1861, seven states had seceded fron the Union. South Carolina was the first to secede on this day.