February 21 – On this day 84 years ago, Barbara Jordan was born. Jordan was the first Black woman to be elected to the U.S. House of Representatives (in 1972) and became the first Black woman from a southern state to serve in that body.
February 22 – On this day in 1989, DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince won the first rap Grammy for their single “Parents Just Don’t Understand.” The song peaked to number 12 on the singles chart, went gold and won an MTV Video Music Award for Best Rap Video.
February 23 – Happy birthday, W.E.B. Du Bois! He was born on this day in 1868 as William Edward Burghardt Du Bois, born in Barrington, Mass., where he resided until journeying off to college at Fisk University in Nashville, Tenn.
Du Bois’ experiences in college opened his eyes to the severity of racial discrimination in the South. After graduating from Fisk, he returned north to attend Harvard University, where he earned a doctorate in 1895, the first Black person to accomplish such. On Aug. 27, 1963, at 95 years of age, he died in Accra, Ghana, just a day before Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s well-known “I Have a Dream” speech at the March on Washington.
February 24 – On this day in 1864, Rebecca Lee Crumpler became the first Black woman to receive an M.D. Crumpler, born in 1833, graduated from the New England Female Medical College.
February 25 – On this day in 1870, Hiram Rhodes Revels took oath as the first African American to serve in the U.S. Senate. As a freeman his entire life, Revels served in the U.S. Congress. He was an American clergyman, educator and politician who served in the U.S. Senate (1870–71) and represented Mississippi during Reconstruction.
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