Black History Month actually started as a week.
Carter Godwin Woodson, historian, author, journalist and founder of The Journal of Negro History in 1915, began Negro History Week in 1926, choosing February because abolitionist and writer Frederick Douglass was born on Feb. 14 and President Abraham Lincoln on Feb. 12. In 1976, President Gerald Ford expanded Negro History Week to Black History Month.
To celebrate the month, let's look at a few facts that may be unfamiliar:
- The highest ratio of black-owned businesses in the U.S. is in Washington, D.C., where 28 percent of all businesses are owned by African-Americans. The second-highest ratio is in Georgia, where 20 percent of all businesses are owned by African-Americans.
- From 1664 until 1967, interracial marriages were against the law in the United States. In 1958, Richard Loving, who was white, and Mildred Jeter, who was black, were married in Washington, D.C., but were arrested when they returned home to Virginia because they'd broken the state's law against interracial marriage. The case went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled in 1967 that such laws were unconstitutional.
- In 2000, Alabama was the last state to remove statutes outlawing interracial marriages from its state constitution, although the ban had not been enforced in decades.
- Before Wally Amos became famous for his "Famous Amos" chocolate chip cookies, he was a talent agent at the William Morris Agency, where he worked with acts such as The Supremes and Simon & Garfunkel. He founded his cookie company in 1975, using a recipe from his aunt.
- In 1985, opthamologist Dr. Patricia Bath created a tool and procedure to remove cataracts.
- Lonnie G. Johnson invented the Super Soaker squirt gun.
- Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated on April 4, which also was the birthday of his friend Maya Angelou. She didn't celebrate her birthday for years and sent flowers to Coretta Scott King, King's widow, until 2006, when Coretta died.
- Before becoming a professional musician, Chuck Berry studied to be a hairdresser.
- Gerald Lawson created the first home video game system with interchangeable game cartridges in 1976.
- Madam C.J. Walker - real name Sarah Breedlove; C.J. Walker was her husband's name - was the first black American woman to become a self-made millionaire. After suffering from hair loss herself in her 20s, she started making her own hair-care products. By the early 1900s, she had invented a bestselling hair-straightening product called "Madam Walker's Wonderful Hair Grower." Within a few years, she had founded the Walker System, a series of cosmetics that were sold by Walker Agents nationwide.
- Andrew Jackson Beard designed the automatic railroad car coupler, aka the Jenny Coupler, which allows two railroad cars to lock automatically by bumping into each other. He patented the idea in 1897.
- The first radio station owned and operated by blacks was WERD, which started broadcasting in Atlanta in 1949.
- Count Basie was the first black male to win a Grammy award, and Ella Fitzgerald was the first black woman. They both won their Grammys in 1958.
- In 1940, Booker T. Washington was the first African-American to be honored on a U.S. stamp.
- In 1987, Ben Carson, now a nominee to head the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, led the first successful operation to separate a pair of twin infants joined at the back of the head.
- Twenty members of the Buffalo Soldiers, the all-black U.S. Army regiments started in 1866, received the Medal of Honor, more than any U.S. military unit.
Sources: blackamericaweb.com, pbs.org, biography.com, blacknews.com, publicradio.org, factmonster.com