January 31, 1925 Benjamin Lawson Hooks, attorney, minister and civil rights leader, was born in Memphis, Tennessee. After graduating from Howard University in 1944, Hooks joined the Army where he found that the prisoners he was responsible for guarding could eat in restaurants from which he was barred. Hooks graduated from DePaul University College of […]
Archive | January 31, 2012
January 31st in African American History – Jack Roosevelt “Jackie” Robinson
January 31, 1919 Jack Roosevelt “Jackie” Robinson, the first African American Major League Baseball player of the modern era, was born in Cairo, Georgia. Robinson attended the University of California at Los Angeles, where he was a star athlete, from 1939 to 1941 and served in the United States Army as a first lieutenant from […]