Jimmy Winkfield died on March 23, 1974 in Maisons-Laffitte, France.

Patricia Roberts Harris, Housing and Urban Development Secretary and, in 1965, ambassador to Luxembourg during the Carter Administration, died in Washington, D.C.

Although the name Elijah McCoy may be unknown to most people,the enormity of his ingenuity and the quality of his inventions have created a level of distinction which bears his name.

Elijah McCoy was born in Colchester, Ontario, Canada on May 2, 1844. His parents were George and Emillia McCoy, former slaves from Kentucky who escaped through the Underground Railroad. George joined the Canadian Army, fighting in the Rebel War and then raised his family as free Canadian citizens on a 160 acre homestead.

At an early age, Elijah showed a mechanical interest, often taking items apart and putting them back together again. Recognizing his keen abilities, George and Emillia saved enough money to send Elijah to Edinburgh, Scotland, where he could study mechanical engineering. After finishing his studies as a “master mechanic and engineer” he returned to the United States which had just seen the end of the Civil War – and the emergence of the “Emancipation Proclamation.”

Elijah moved to Ypsilanti, Michigan but was unable to find work as an engineer. He was thus forced to take on a position as a fireman\oilman on the Michigan Central Railroad. As a fireman, McCoy was responsible for shoveling coal onto fires which would help to produce steam that powered the locomotive. As an oilman, Elijah was responsible for ensuring that the train was well lubricated. After a few miles, the train would be forced to stop and he would have to walk alongside the train applying oil to the axles and bearings.

In an effort to improve efficiency and eliminate the frequent stopping necessary for lubrication of the train, McCoy set out to create a method of automating the task. In 1872 he developed a “lubricating cup” that could automatically drip oil when and where needed. He received a patent for the device later that year. The “lubricating cup” met with enormous success and orders for it came in from railroad companies all over the country. Other

Moses Eugene Malone is widely considered as of the greatest NBA centers in history. He was born on March 23, 1955, in Petersburg, Virginia. He attended Petersburg High School and was set to attend college at University of Maryland to play basketball. However, he was recruited by the American Basketball Association to play for the Utah Stars in 1974, so he skipped college and went straight to play for the ABA. He was the first player to become professional straight after high school. He was 19 years old, and stood 6 feet and 10 inches tall. He played forward for a while before his lanky physique became more muscular, and then started playing as a center. After playing for the Utah Stars, Malone joined another team called “Spirits of St. Louis”. He had an impressive record, with an average of 17.2 points and 12.9 rebounds per game. In 1976, the NBA and ABA merged, but Malone’s team Spirits of St. Louis was one of the only teams that chose not to join the NBA. He was later officially selected by the Portland Trailblazers.

Before playing even one regular season with the Trailblazers, Malone was transferred to the Buffalo Braves. This did not last long either, and just after two games, he was transferred to the Houston Rockets. His record with the Rockets was impressive and he helped them to reach the Eastern Conference finals, which his team lost to the Philadelphia 76ers. An unfortunate injury caused him to miss the last 23 games of his second season with the Rockets but his record of total offensive rebounds was still the highest in that season. The 1978-79 season was one of Malone’s best in his entire career. He averaged 24.8 points that season as well as 17.6 rebounds, which was the highest of his career. He was awarded the MVP (Most Valuable Player) award that season. He was selected to the All-NBA First Team as well as the NBA All-Star Game.

The following season, Moses Malone continued his high scoring streak and ranked fifth in the league in points scored. The Houston Rockets made it to the playoffs that

In the spring of 2012, the former rebels who were integrated into the army in 2009 mutinied, saying the government—rife with corruption—had reneged on terms of the cease-fire that was signed on March 23, 2009. The rebels, called the M23 movement, are led by Gen. Bosco Ntaganda, a Tutsi who is wanted by the International Criminal Court. M23 fought government troops throughout the year, taking over city after city. The violence peaked in November, when the rebels took Goma in eastern Congo. Rwanda, which is led by Tutsi Paul Kagame, is widely suspected of not only supplying arms to the rebels but also fighting alongside them.

The UN and leaders from 11 central African nations, including the presidents of Congo, Rwanda, Uganda, and Congo, signed a framework agreement in February 2013, pledging to work together to end the conflict with the rebels. In March, the UN Security Council authorized an intervention brigade of 3,000 troops to disarm the rebels. The brigade supplemented the 15,000 UN peacekeeping troops already in Congo. After heavy fighting in August, the UN brigade forced the rebels out of Goma. However, the signers of the framework agreement had made little progress in the peace process.

Ntaganda turned himself in to the U.S. embassy in Kigali, Rwanda, in March 2013. He was transferred to the Hague, where he will face charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity. It was not clear why he chose to surrender.

The M23 rebels surrendered in November 2013. The UNs more aggressive approach, an improved Congolese Army, and a reduction in aid to Rwanda contributed to the defeat of the rebels.

See also Encyclopedia: Congo (Kinshasa)

U.S. State Dept. Country Notes: Congo (Kinshasa)

Jason Kidd is a retired NBA basketball professional, who is widely considered as one of the most talented players in the history of the game. He was born on March 23, 1973 to Steve and Anne Kidd. He was the oldest of six children and was a talented sportsman from an early age, being sought by AAU (Amateur Athletic Union) teams from the start. He attended St. Joseph Notre Dame High School in California, leading his team to two team championships and being named the High School Player of the Year by “Parade” and “USA Today” in his senior year as well as being named as one of the 35 Greatest McDonald’s All Americans.

Kidd then enrolled at UC Berkeley on a basketball scholarship, choosing this over several other offers such as the University of Arizona, the University of Kentucky, the University of Kansas, and Ohio State University. He had an extremely successful college career, and set several records with them in the two years he spent there. At the end of his sophomore year, he decided to go pro and was selected in the 1994 NBA draft by the Dallas Mavericks. He stayed with the team until 1996, where he won the Rookie of the Year Award after he helped them improve from the worst record in the NBA to the most improved record in the NBA in just one season. In the following season, Kidd was chosen to start in the 1996 All-Star Game. However, because of some problems with the team’s management, Kidd was traded to the Phoenix Suns during the 1996-97 season.

Jason Kidd stayed with the Suns until 2001, during which he made the All-Star Game in 1998, 2000, and 2001 and was also voted to the All-NBA First Team for three consecutive years between 1999 and 2001. His style of play was suited to the team very well, as both were fast paced and he helped them to improve their record substantially and got along well with his teammates. In 2001, Kidd, along with fellow Suns’ teammate Chris Dudley, was traded to the New Jersey Nets. The first season that he joined he joined the team saw them improve their victory margin by 26

Politician, writer and activist Walter Rodney is born

Barrington Irving is the first African American to fly solo around the world and, as of 2010, the youngest person to complete the feat. He made his flight at the age of 23. Irving was born in Kingston, Jamaica on November 11th, 1983. He was the oldest of three brothers. When Irving was six years old, his family relocated to inner-city Miami, Florida. Here his parents operated a Christian bookstore where Irving worked when he was not in school.

Around the age of 15, Irving began to develop a pronounced interest in aviation. A customer at his parents’ bookstore was a United Airlines pilot and invited Irving to visit the airport and tour the cockpit of a Boeing 777 airliner. The tour was a turning point in Irving’s life, which quickly became focused on learning to fly. Soon, Irving was working odd jobs at airports in order to earn flying time in light aircraft while practicing at home with a computer flight simulator.

Irving attended Miami Northwestern Senior High School, juggling school with a variety of jobs, the proceeds of which he used to fund his aviation dreams. He graduated from high school in 2002. Irving turned down football scholarships and instead accepted a Florida Bright Future Scholarship, which helped him to pay for community college classes.

As a result of volunteer work teaching youth about aviation opportunities, Irving was awarded the $100,000 Florida Memorial University/ U.S. Air Force Flight Awareness Scholarship in 2003. This scholarship paid for Irving to attend Florida Memorial University, where he studied aerospace science. It also covered flight training, through which Irving earned several pilot ratings and added flying hours to his logbook.

In 2005, Irving founded the non-profit Experience Aviation, Inc. The corporation was intended to educate and inspire youth about aviation-related careers. Experience Aviation received federally-funded grant money that enabled it to create education programs, give students aircraft tours and install flight simulators for student use.

Irving is most

Rev. Walter Fauntroy, a former aide of Martin Luther King Jr., became the first nonvoting congressional delegate from the District of Columbia since the Reconstruction period.

National Basketball Association star, Moses The Mailman Malone is born in Petersburg, Virginia.

Patricia Roberts Harris , née Patricia Roberts (born May 31, 1924, Mattoon, Ill., U.S.—died March 23, 1985, Washington, D.C.), American public official, the first African American woman named to a U.S. ambassadorship and the first as well to serve in a presidential cabinet.

Harris grew up in Mattoon and in Chicago. She graduated from Howard University, Washington, D.C., in 1945, pursued graduate studies for two years at the University of Chicago, and from 1946 to 1949 was a program director for the Young Women’s Christian Association in Chicago. In 1949 she returned to Washington, D.C., where she did further graduate work at American University and worked as assistant director of the American Council on Human Rights (1949–53). For six years thereafter she was executive director of the national headquarters of Delta Sigma Theta sorority. In 1960 she graduated from the law school at George Washington University and was admitted to the District of Columbia bar. After a year in the criminal division of the U.S. Department of Justice, she became associate dean of students and lecturer in law at Howard University. During 1962–65 she worked with the National Capital Area Civil Liberties Union. Although she relinquished her administrative post at Howard in 1963, she remained on the Howard faculty.

In 1963 Harris was named cochair, with Mildred McAfee Horton, of the National Women’s Committee for Civil Rights. Serving as U.S. ambassador to Luxembourg from 1965 to 1967, she was the first African American woman to hold ambassadorial rank. She rejoined the Howard law faculty from 1967 to 1969. From January 1977 to August 1979, she was secretary of housing and urban development, and she thereafter was secretary of health, education and welfare (later health and human services). She was the first African American woman to be a member of a presidential cabinet.

In 1981 she returned to George Washington University as a full-time professor of law, and in 1982 she made an unsuccessful bid for mayor of Washington, D.C.

George Washington Carver was born in 1860 in Diamond Grove, Missouri and despite early difficulties would rise to become one of the most celebrated and respected scientists in United States history. His important discoveries and methods enabled farmers through the south and midwest to become profitable and prosperous.

George was born the sickly child of two slaves and would remain frail for most of his childhood. One night a band of raiders attacked his family and stole George and his mother. Days later, George was found unharmed by neighbors and was traded back to his owners in exchange for a racehorse. Because of his frailty, George was not suited for work in the fields but he did possess a great interest in plants and was very eager to learn more about them.

His master sent him to Neosho, Missouri for an early education and graduated from Minneapolis High School in Kansas. He eventually mailed an application to Highland University in Kansas and was not only accepted but also offered a scholarship. Happily, George traveled to the school to accept the scholarship but upon meeting George, the University president asked “why didn’t you tell me you were a Negro?” and promptly withdrew the scholarship and the acceptance.

In 1887 Carver was accepted into Simpson College in Indianola, Iowa where he became well respected for his artistic talent (in later days his art would be included in the spectacular World’s Columbian Exposition Art Exhibit.) Carver’s interests, however, lay more in science and he transferred from Simpson to Iowa Agricultural College (which is now known as Iowa State University.) He distinguished himself so much that upon graduation he was offered a position on the school’s faculty, the first Black accorded the honor. Carver was allowed great freedom in working in agriculture and botany in the University’s greenhouses. In 1895, Carver co-authored a series of papers on the prevention and cures for fungus

Ama Ata Aidoo , in full Christina Ama Ata Aidoo (born March 23, 1942, Abeadzi Kyiakor, near Saltpond, Gold Coast [now Ghana]), Ghanaian writer whose work, written in English, emphasized the paradoxical position of the modern African woman.

Aidoo began to write seriously while an honours student at the University of Ghana (B.A., 1964). She won early recognition with a problem play, The Dilemma of a Ghost (1965), in which a Ghanaian student returning home brings his African American wife into the traditional culture and the extended family that he now finds restrictive. Their dilemma reflects Aidoo’s characteristic concern with the “been-to” (African educated abroad), voiced again in her semiautobiographical experimental first novel, Our Sister Killjoy; or, Reflections from a Black-Eyed Squint (1966). Aidoo herself won a fellowship to Stanford University in California, returned to teach at Cape Coast, Ghana (1970–82), and subsequently accepted various visiting professorships in the United States and Kenya.

In No Sweetness Here (1970), a collection of short stories, Aidoo exercised the oral element of storytelling, writing tales that are meant to be read aloud. These stories and Anowa (1970), another problem play, are concerned with Western influences on the role of women and on the individual in a communal society. Aidoo rejected the argument that Western education emancipates African women. She further exposed exploitation of women who, as unacknowledged heads of households when war or unemployment leaves them husbandless, must support their children alone. In 1982–83 she served as Ghana’s minister of education. Aidoo published little between 1970 and 1985, when Someone Talking to Sometime, a collection of poetry, appeared. Her later titles include The Eagle and the Chickens (1986; a collection of children’s stories), Birds and Other Poems (1987), the novel Changes: A Love Story (1991), An Angry Letter in January and Other Poems (1992), The Girl Who Can and Other Stories (1997), and Diplomatic Pounds and

Sometimes the greatest inventions are those which simplify necessary tasks. Such is the case with Jan Matzeliger – the man who made it possible for ordinary citizens to purchase shoes.

Jan Matzeliger was born in Dutch Guiana (now known as Surinam) in South America. His father was a Dutch engineer and his mother was born in Dutch Guiana and was of African ancestry. His father had been sent to Surinam by the Dutch government to oversee the work going on in the South American country.

At an early age, Jan showed a remarkable ability to repair complex machinery and often did so when accompanying his father to a factory. When he turned 19, he decided to venture away from home to explore other parts of the world. For two years he worked aboard an East Indian merchant ship and was able to visit several countries. In 1873, Jan decided to stay in the United States for a while, landing in Pennsylvania. Although he spoke very little English, he was befriended by some Black residents who were active in a local church and took pity on him. Because he was good with his hands and mechanically inclined, he was able to get small jobs in order to earn a living.

At some point he began working for a cobbler and became interested in the making of shoes. At that time more than half of the shoes produced in the United States came from the small town of Lynn, Massachusetts. Still unable to speak more than rudimentary English, Matzeliger had a difficult time finding work in Lynn. After considerable time, he was able to begin working as a show apprentice in a shoe factory. He operated a McKay sole-sewing machine which was used to attached different parts of a shoe together. Unfortunately, no machines existed that could attach the upper part of a shoe to the sole. As such, attaching the upper part of a shoe to the sole had to be done by hand. The people who were able to sew the parts of the shoe together were called “hand lasters” and expert ones

Marcus Mosiah Garvey arrives in America from Jamaica.

Irving was born on March 23, 1992, in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia to Elizabeth and Drederick Irving.