<?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8'?>
<?xml-stylesheet type="text/css" href="/css/rss.css" ?>
<rdf:RDF xmlns:rdf="http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#"
         xmlns="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/"
         xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/"
         xmlns:georss="http://www.georss.org/georss"><docs>This is a RSS file. Copy the URL into your aggregator of choice. If you don't know what this means and want to learn more, please see: <span>http://platial.typepad.com/news/2006/04/really_simple_t.html</span> for more info.</docs>
<channel rdf:about="http://platial.comhttp://platial.com/map/Black-History-Timeline/1749">
<link>http://platial.comhttp://platial.com/map/Black-History-Timeline/1749</link>
<title>Black History Timeline</title>
<description>A Timeline of African American History</description>
<items>
<rdf:Seq>
<rdf:li resource="http://platial.com/post/34877"/>
<rdf:li resource="http://platial.com/post/34866"/>
<rdf:li resource="http://platial.com/post/34873"/>
<rdf:li resource="http://platial.com/post/34875"/>
<rdf:li resource="http://platial.com/post/34417"/>
<rdf:li resource="http://platial.com/post/34418"/>
<rdf:li resource="http://platial.com/post/34420"/>
<rdf:li resource="http://platial.com/post/34421"/>
<rdf:li resource="http://platial.com/post/34422"/>
<rdf:li resource="http://platial.com/post/34425"/>
<rdf:li resource="http://platial.com/post/34427"/>
<rdf:li resource="http://platial.com/post/34428"/>
<rdf:li resource="http://platial.com/post/34445"/>
<rdf:li resource="http://platial.com/post/34453"/>
<rdf:li resource="http://platial.com/post/34470"/>
<rdf:li resource="http://platial.com/post/34474"/>
<rdf:li resource="http://platial.com/post/34477"/>
<rdf:li resource="http://platial.com/post/34478"/>
<rdf:li resource="http://platial.com/post/34513"/>
<rdf:li resource="http://platial.com/post/34514"/>
<rdf:li resource="http://platial.com/post/34516"/>
<rdf:li resource="http://platial.com/post/34517"/>
<rdf:li resource="http://platial.com/post/34519"/>
<rdf:li resource="http://platial.com/post/34520"/>
<rdf:li resource="http://platial.com/post/34521"/>
<rdf:li resource="http://platial.com/post/34524"/>
<rdf:li resource="http://platial.com/post/34526"/>
<rdf:li resource="http://platial.com/post/34527"/>
<rdf:li resource="http://platial.com/post/34528"/>
<rdf:li resource="http://platial.com/post/34529"/>
<rdf:li resource="http://platial.com/post/34530"/>
<rdf:li resource="http://platial.com/post/34532"/>
<rdf:li resource="http://platial.com/post/34533"/>
<rdf:li resource="http://platial.com/post/34534"/>
<rdf:li resource="http://platial.com/post/34857"/>
<rdf:li resource="http://platial.com/post/34858"/>
<rdf:li resource="http://platial.com/post/34864"/>
<rdf:li resource="http://platial.com/post/34865"/>
<rdf:li resource="http://platial.com/post/34867"/>
<rdf:li resource="http://platial.com/post/34869"/>
<rdf:li resource="http://platial.com/post/34871"/>
<rdf:li resource="http://platial.com/post/34872"/>
<rdf:li resource="http://platial.com/post/34874"/>
<rdf:li resource="http://platial.com/post/34876"/>
<rdf:li resource="http://platial.com/post/34878"/>
<rdf:li resource="http://platial.com/post/34879"/>
<rdf:li resource="http://platial.com/post/34880"/>
<rdf:li resource="http://platial.com/post/34881"/>
<rdf:li resource="http://platial.com/post/34882"/>
<rdf:li resource="http://platial.com/post/34883"/>
<rdf:li resource="http://platial.com/post/34886"/>
<rdf:li resource="http://platial.com/post/35101"/>
<rdf:li resource="http://platial.com/post/35102"/>
<rdf:li resource="http://platial.com/post/35104"/>
<rdf:li resource="http://platial.com/post/35105"/>
<rdf:li resource="http://platial.com/post/35108"/>
<rdf:li resource="http://platial.com/post/35109"/>
<rdf:li resource="http://platial.com/post/35110"/>
<rdf:li resource="http://platial.com/post/34414"/>
<rdf:li resource="http://platial.com/post/34415"/>
<rdf:li resource="http://platial.com/post/34416"/>
<rdf:li resource="http://platial.com/post/34419"/>
<rdf:li resource="http://platial.com/post/34424"/>
<rdf:li resource="http://platial.com/post/34426"/>
<rdf:li resource="http://platial.com/post/34434"/>
<rdf:li resource="http://platial.com/post/34436"/>
<rdf:li resource="http://platial.com/post/34442"/>
<rdf:li resource="http://platial.com/post/34471"/>
<rdf:li resource="http://platial.com/post/34472"/>
<rdf:li resource="http://platial.com/post/34473"/>
<rdf:li resource="http://platial.com/post/34475"/>
<rdf:li resource="http://platial.com/post/34476"/>
<rdf:li resource="http://platial.com/post/34515"/>
<rdf:li resource="http://platial.com/post/34518"/>
<rdf:li resource="http://platial.com/post/34522"/>
<rdf:li resource="http://platial.com/post/34523"/>
<rdf:li resource="http://platial.com/post/34525"/>
<rdf:li resource="http://platial.com/post/34531"/>
<rdf:li resource="http://platial.com/post/34535"/>
<rdf:li resource="http://platial.com/post/34868"/>
<rdf:li resource="http://platial.com/post/34870"/>
<rdf:li resource="http://platial.com/post/34884"/>
<rdf:li resource="http://platial.com/post/34885"/>
<rdf:li resource="http://platial.com/post/35103"/>
<rdf:li resource="http://platial.com/post/35107"/>
<rdf:li resource="http://platial.com/post/35111"/>
<rdf:li resource="http://platial.com/post/35100"/>
<rdf:li resource="http://platial.com/post/35106"/>
</rdf:Seq>
</items>
</channel>
<item rdf:about="http://platial.com/post/34877">
<link>http://platial.com/post/34877</link>
<title>Newton Convicted</title>
<description>
        <![CDATA[
        1967. Huey P. Newton, cofounder of the Black Panther Party, is convicted on a charge of manslaughter in the death of an Oakland policeman, leading to the rapid expansion of the party nationwide. An illiterate high-school graduate, Newton taught himself how to read before attending Merritt College in Oakland and the San Francisco School of Law, where he met Seale. In Oakland in 1966 they formed the Black Panther group in response to incidents of alleged police brutality and racism and as an illustration of the need for black self-reliance. At the height of its popularity during the late 1960s, the party had 2,000 members in chapters in several cities.

In 1967 Newton was convicted of voluntary manslaughter in the death of a police officer, but his conviction was overturned 22 months later, and he was released from prison. In 1971 he announced that the party would adopt a nonviolent manifesto and dedicate itself to providing social services to the black community. In 1974 he was accused of another murder and fled to Cuba for three years before returning to face charges; two trials resulted in hung juries.

Newton received a Ph.D. in social philosophy from the University of California at Santa Cruz (1980); his dissertation, "War Against the Panthers," was subtitled "A Study of Repression in America." Succumbing to factionalism and pressure from government agencies, the party disbanded in 1982. In March 1989 Newton was sentenced to a six-month jail term for misappropriating public funds intended for a Panther-founded Oakland school. In August of that year he was found shot dead on a street in Oakland. (http://www.britannica.com)<br /><br /><a href="http://platial.com/post/34877">Map this on Platial</a><br /> 
        ]]>
        </description>
<georss:point> </georss:point>
<dc:creator></dc:creator>
<dc:date>2006-02-10 10:17:28.401513+00:00</dc:date>
</item>
<item rdf:about="http://platial.com/post/34866">
<link>http://platial.com/post/34866</link>
<title>Black Caucus</title>
<description>
        <![CDATA[
        1971. Fifteen African American members of Congress form the Congressional Black Caucus to present a unified African American voice in Congress. (http://www.pbs.org)<br /><br /><a href="http://platial.com/post/34866">Map this on Platial</a><br /> 
        ]]>
        </description>
<georss:point> </georss:point>
<dc:creator></dc:creator>
<dc:date>2006-02-10 10:03:03.621495+00:00</dc:date>
</item>
<item rdf:about="http://platial.com/post/34873">
<link>http://platial.com/post/34873</link>
<title>Brooke Elected Senator</title>
<description>
        <![CDATA[
         
1967. Edward W. Brooke becomes the first African American U.S. Senator since Reconstruction. He serves two terms as a Republican from Massachusetts. (http://www.pbs.org)<br /><br /><a href="http://platial.com/post/34873">Map this on Platial</a><br /> 
        ]]>
        </description>
<georss:point> </georss:point>
<dc:creator></dc:creator>
<dc:date>2006-02-10 10:11:19.327373+00:00</dc:date>
</item>
<item rdf:about="http://platial.com/post/34875">
<link>http://platial.com/post/34875</link>
<title>Marshall Supreme Court Justice</title>
<description>
        <![CDATA[
        1967. Thurgood Marshall, who as a lawyer argued Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, becomes the first African American U.S. Supreme Court justice. Marshall was the son of William Canfield Marshall, a railroad porter and a steward at an all-white country club, and Norma Williams Marshall, an elementary school teacher. He graduated with honours from Lincoln University (Pennsylvania) in 1930. After being rejected by the University of Maryland Law School because he was not white, Marshall attended Howard University Law School; he received his degree in 1933, ranking first in his class. At Howard he was the protégé of Charles Hamilton Houston, who encouraged Marshall and other law students to view the law as a vehicle for social change.

Upon his graduation from Howard, Marshall began the private practice of law in Baltimore. Among his first legal victories was Murray v. Pearson (1935), in which Marshall successfully sued the University of Maryland for denying an African American applicant admission to its law school simply on the basis of race. In 1936 Marshall became a staff lawyer under Houston for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP); in 1938 he became the lead chair in the legal office of the NAACP, and two years later he was named chief of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund.

Throughout the 1940s and '50s Marshall distinguished himself as one of the country's top lawyers, winning 29 of the 32 cases that he argued before the U.S. Supreme Court. Among them were cases in which the court declared unconstitutional a Southern state's exclusion of African American voters from primary elections (Smith v. Allwright [1944]), state judicial enforcement of racial “restrictive covenants” in housing (Shelley v. Kraemer [1948]), and "separate but equal" facilities for African American professionals and graduate students in state universities (Sweatt v. Painter and McLaurin v. Oklahoma State Regents [both 1950]). Without a doubt, however, it was his victory before the Supreme Court in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka that established his reputation as a formidable and creative legal opponent and an advocate of social change. Indeed, students of constitutional law still examine the oral arguments of the case and the ultimate decision of the court from both a legal and a political perspective; legally, Marshall argued that segregation in public education produced unequal schools for African Americans and whites (a key element in the strategy to have the court overrule the "separate but equal" doctrine established in Plessy v. Ferguson [1896]), but it was Marshall's reliance on psychological, sociological, and historical data that presumably sensitized the court to the deleterious effects of institutionalized segregation on the self-image, social worth, and social progress of African American children. (http://www.britannica.com)<br /><br /><a href="http://platial.com/post/34875">Map this on Platial</a><br /> 
        ]]>
        </description>
<georss:point> </georss:point>
<dc:creator></dc:creator>
<dc:date>2006-02-10 10:14:44.285994+00:00</dc:date>
</item>
<item rdf:about="http://platial.com/post/34417">
<link>http://platial.com/post/34417</link>
<title>Halle Berry Wins Best Actress</title>
<description>
        <![CDATA[
        2002/03/24. Halle Berry becomes the first African-American woman to receive an Academy Award for best actress and Denzel Washington becomes only the second African-American man to win in the best actor category. She received the honour in 2001 for her nuanced portrayal of Leticia Musgrove, a down-on-her-luck character in Monster's Ball (2000).

A teenage finalist in national beauty pageants, Berry worked in modeling and began acting on television in 1989. Film roles in Jungle Fever (1991), directed by Spike Lee, and in Boomerang (1992), starring Eddie Murphy, first brought her notice. She costarred with Jessica Lange in Losing Isiaiah (1995), a drama about adoption, before earning acclaim for her portrayal of film star Dorothy Dandridge, the first African American to be nominated for a best-actress Oscar, in the television film Introducing Dorothy Dandridge (1999). That performance earned her Emmy and Golden Globe awards. Berry was also cast in action roles in X-Men (2000), Swordfish (2001), and Die Another Day (2002), an installment in the James Bond spy series. Gothika (2003) and Catwoman (2004) were the first films in which she received top billing. <br /><br /><a href="http://platial.com/post/34417">Map this on Platial</a><br /> 
        ]]>
        </description>
<georss:point> </georss:point>
<dc:creator></dc:creator>
<dc:date>2006-02-06 19:21:52.96501+00:00</dc:date>
</item>
<item rdf:about="http://platial.com/post/34418">
<link>http://platial.com/post/34418</link>
<title>Parks wins Pulitzer for Drama</title>
<description>
        <![CDATA[
        2002/04/11
Suzan-Lori Parks, with her play Topdog/Underdog, becomes the first African American woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for drama. arks, who was writing stories at age five, had a peripatetic childhood as the daughter of a military officer. She attended Mount Holyoke College, South Hadley, Massachusetts (B.A. [cum laude], 1985), where James Baldwin, who taught a writing class there, encouraged her to try playwriting. She wrote her first play, The Sinner's Place (produced 1984), while still in school. She won Obie Awards for her third play, Imperceptible Mutabilities in the Third Kingdom (produced 1989), and for her eighth, Venus (produced 1996), about a South African Khoisan woman taken to England as a sideshow attraction. Parks's other plays include The Death of the Last Black Man in the Whole Entire World (produced 1990); The America Play (produced 1994), about a man obsessed with Abraham Lincoln; and In the Blood (produced 1999), which updates Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter. Parks also wrote screenplays (Girl 6, 1996) and radio plays (Pickling, 1990). Her writing has been praised for its wild poetry, its irreverence, its humour, and its concurrent profundity. Her first novel, Getting Mother's Body, was published in 2003.<br /><br /><a href="http://platial.com/post/34418">Map this on Platial</a><br /> 
        ]]>
        </description>
<georss:point> </georss:point>
<dc:creator></dc:creator>
<dc:date>2006-02-06 19:23:14.844344+00:00</dc:date>
</item>
<item rdf:about="http://platial.com/post/34420">
<link>http://platial.com/post/34420</link>
<title>Colin Powell first African-American Secretary of State</title>
<description>
        <![CDATA[
        2001/01/20. General Colin Powell becomes the first African American U.S. secretary of state, after having been nominated in 1989 the first African American chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff by President George H.W. Bush. The son of Jamaican immigrants, Powell grew up in the Harlem and South Bronx sections of New York City and attended the City College of New York (B.S., 1958), serving in the Reserve Officers' Training Corps (ROTC). He entered the army upon graduation, served in Vietnam in 1962–63 and 1968–69, and then studied at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. In 1972 he took his first political position, as a White House fellow, and soon became an assistant to Frank Carlucci, then deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). He held various posts over the next few years, in the Pentagon and elsewhere, and in 1983 became senior military assistant to Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger. In 1987 he joined the staff of the National Security Council as deputy to Carlucci, then assistant to the president for national security affairs. Late in 1987 President Ronald Reagan appointed Powell to succeed Carlucci. Early in 1989 Powell took over the Army Forces Command.

In April 1989 Powell became a four-star general, and in August President George Bush nominated him chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. As chairman, he played a leading role in planning the invasion of Panama (1989) and the Desert Shield and Desert Storm operations of the Persian Gulf crisis and war (August 1990–March 1991). He retired from the military in 1993, sparking speculation that he would enter politics. Although he decided not to run for president in 1996, he joined the Republican Party and spoke out on national issues. In 2001 Powell was appointed secretary of state by President George W. Bush. My American Journey, his autobiography (written with Joseph E. Persico), was published in 1995. (http://www.britannica.com)<br /><br /><a href="http://platial.com/post/34420">Map this on Platial</a><br /> 
        ]]>
        </description>
<georss:point> </georss:point>
<dc:creator></dc:creator>
<dc:date>2006-02-06 19:34:06.047789+00:00</dc:date>
</item>
<item rdf:about="http://platial.com/post/34421">
<link>http://platial.com/post/34421</link>
<title>Williams Wins Two Olympic Golds</title>
<description>
        <![CDATA[
        2000. Venus Williams becomes the first African American woman to win a gold medal in singles and doubles tennis at the same Olympic Games. The Williams sisters were introduced to the sport on the public courts in Los Angeles by their father, who early on recognized their talent and oversaw their development. Venus turned professional in 1994, and Serena followed suit a year later. Possessing powerful serves and ground strokes and superb athleticism, the sisters soon attracted much attention. In 1997 Venus became the first unseeded U.S. Open women's finalist in the open era; she lost to Martina Hingis. Many predicted Venus would be the first Williams sister to win a grand slam singles title, but it was Serena who accomplished the feat, winning the 1999 U.S. Open. Although disappointed, Venus quickly rebounded and in 2000 won both Wimbledon and the U.S. Open; she defended her titles in 2001.

At the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney, Australia, Venus captured the gold medal in the singles competition and claimed a second one with Serena in the doubles event. After several years of inconsistent play, Serena asserted herself in 2002 and won the French Open, the U.S. Open, and Wimbledon, defeating Venus in the finals of each tournament. Known for her fierce tenacity, Serena won the Australian Open and Wimbledon the following year, again besting her sister in the finals. Despite their numerous clashes on the court, the sisters enjoyed a friendly rivalry and often competed together in doubles events. (http://www.britannica.com)<br /><br /><a href="http://platial.com/post/34421">Map this on Platial</a><br /> 
        ]]>
        </description>
<georss:point> </georss:point>
<dc:creator></dc:creator>
<dc:date>2006-02-06 19:44:42.46789+00:00</dc:date>
</item>
<item rdf:about="http://platial.com/post/34422">
<link>http://platial.com/post/34422</link>
<title>46,000 Protest Confederate Flag</title>
<description>
        <![CDATA[
        2000/01/17. More than 46,000 protesters rally in a march on the state capitol at Columbia, South Carolina, to protest the Confederate battle flag flying atop the statehouse dome. NAACP chair Kweisi Mfume, the main speaker at the event, called it the greatest civil rights rally since the 1960s. In August 1999, the NAACP had called for a national boycott of vacation spots in South Carolina in an attempt to force the state government to remove the Confederate flag from the dome of its statehouse. Controversy on this issue grows, involving the flying of the Confederate flag in other southern states as well. (http://www.galegroup.com)<br /><br /><a href="http://platial.com/post/34422">Map this on Platial</a><br /> 
        ]]>
        </description>
<georss:point> </georss:point>
<dc:creator></dc:creator>
<dc:date>2006-02-06 19:49:01.989142+00:00</dc:date>
</item>
<item rdf:about="http://platial.com/post/34425">
<link>http://platial.com/post/34425</link>
<title>Jordon Leads Bulls to 6th Championship</title>
<description>
        <![CDATA[
        1998/06/14. Michael Jordan, often considered the greatest all-around player in the history of basketball, leads the Chicago Bulls to their sixth championship. (http://www.britannica.com)<br /><br /><a href="http://platial.com/post/34425">Map this on Platial</a><br /> 
        ]]>
        </description>
<georss:point> </georss:point>
<dc:creator></dc:creator>
<dc:date>2006-02-06 20:00:20.456225+00:00</dc:date>
</item>
<item rdf:about="http://platial.com/post/34427">
<link>http://platial.com/post/34427</link>
<title>African American Churches Burned</title>
<description>
        <![CDATA[
        1996. Amid growing racial tension in the South, nearly 40 primarily African American churches are burned there. Proclaiming that black churches taught their congregations how to manipulate the welfare system and procure government subsidies, the Klan set up shop in 1994 in a field near Macedonia Baptist Church. Its members were forced to listen to the Klan's message of hate as it blared through the church windows. One of the young white men listening outside, a friend and neighbor of Macedonia parishioners, helped burn the church.

On June 20th and 21st, 1995, Timothy Welch and another young man, Christopher Cox, burned Macedonia Baptist and Mt. Zion AME Church. They and two older accomplices, Arthur Haley and Hubert Rowell, were found guilty of the church burnings and sentenced to 15 21 years in prison (later reduced to 12 years for Cox and Welch for testifying in the civil suit against the Klan). On July 24, 1998, in the largest judgment ever awarded against a hate group, a jury ordered the Christian Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, Grand Dragon Horace King and four other Klansmen to pay $37.8 million for their roles in a conspiracy to burn Macedonia Baptist Church. (http://www.pbs.org)<br /><br /><a href="http://platial.com/post/34427">Map this on Platial</a><br /> 
        ]]>
        </description>
<georss:point> </georss:point>
<dc:creator></dc:creator>
<dc:date>2006-02-07 16:30:20.842228+00:00</dc:date>
</item>
<item rdf:about="http://platial.com/post/34428">
<link>http://platial.com/post/34428</link>
<title>The Million Man March</title>
<description>
        <![CDATA[
        1995/10/16. The Million Man March was held in Washington D.C. The march was the idea of Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, who called the event, "A Day of Atonement and Reconciliation." The march was described as a call to black men to take charge in rebuilding their communities and show more respect for themselves and devotion to their families. (http://www.galegroup.com)<br /><br /><a href="http://platial.com/post/34428">Map this on Platial</a><br /> 
        ]]>
        </description>
<georss:point> </georss:point>
<dc:creator></dc:creator>
<dc:date>2006-02-06 20:07:48.583497+00:00</dc:date>
</item>
<item rdf:about="http://platial.com/post/34445">
<link>http://platial.com/post/34445</link>
<title>Rita Dove named Poet Laureate</title>
<description>
        <![CDATA[
        1993. Poet Rita Dove, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Thomas and Beulah, is chosen as poet laureate of the United States. Dove was ranked one of the top hundred high-school students in the country in 1970, and she was named a Presidential Scholar. She graduated summa cum laude from Miami University in Ohio in 1973 and studied subsequently at Tübingen University in Germany. She studied creative writing at the University of Iowa (M.F.A., 1977) and published the first of several chapbooks of her poetry in 1977. From 1981 to 1989 Dove taught at Arizona State University, leaving that post to teach at the University of Virginia.

In her poetry collections, including The Yellow House on the Corner (1980) and Museum (1983), as well as a volume of short stories titled Fifth Sunday (1985), Dove focused her attention on the particulars of family life and personal struggle, addressing the larger social and political dimensions of black experience primarily by indirection. The Pulitzer Prize-winning Thomas and Beulah (1986) is a cycle of poems chronicling the lives of the author's maternal grandparents, born in the Deep South at the turn of the century. Subsequent poetry collections include The Other Side of the House (1988), Grace Notes (1989), Mother Love (1995), On the Bus With Rosa Parks (1999), and American Smooth (2004). In 1993 she became the youngest person and first African American to be appointed poet laureate of the United States by the Library of Congress. In addition to poetry and short stories, she wrote a novel, Through the Ivory Gate (1992); a collection of essays, The Poet's World (1995); and a verse play, The Darker Face of the Earth, published in 1994. (http://www.britannica.com)<br /><br /><a href="http://platial.com/post/34445">Map this on Platial</a><br /> 
        ]]>
        </description>
<georss:point> </georss:point>
<dc:creator></dc:creator>
<dc:date>2006-02-06 20:35:59.505349+00:00</dc:date>
</item>
<item rdf:about="http://platial.com/post/34453">
<link>http://platial.com/post/34453</link>
<title>Carol Moseley Braun Elected Senator</title>
<description>
        <![CDATA[
        1992/11/03. Carol Moseley Braun of Illinois was the first black woman ever elected to the United States Senate. Carol Moseley attended the University of Illinois at Chicago (B.A., 1969) and received a law degree from the University of Chicago (1972). She married Michael Braun in 1973 (divorced 1986) and worked as an assistant U.S. attorney before her election to the Illinois House of Representatives in 1978. During her 10 years there she became known for her advocacy of health-care and education reform and gun control. She was named assistant leader for the Democratic majority.

From 1988 to 1992 Moseley Braun served as Cook county (Illinois) recorder of deeds. Displeased with U.S. Senator Alan Dixon's support of U.S. Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas, she ran against Dixon in the 1992 Democratic primary. Though poorly financed, she won an upset victory over Dixon on her way to capturing a seat in the Senate.

Shortly after becoming senator, Moseley Braun won clashes with Southern senators over a patent for a Confederate insignia. She was noted for her support of individual retirement accounts for homemakers and for filibustering to restore budget monies for youth job training and for senior citizens. Her record was tarnished, however, by her helping to ease legal restrictions on the sale of two television broadcasting companies, by lavish personal spending of campaign money, and by her favouring legislation to benefit a corporate campaign donor. She also was criticized for associating with two Nigerian military dictators.

In 1998 Moseley Braun lost her seat to her Republican challenger, Peter Fitzgerald. From 1999 to 2001 she served as U.S. ambassador to New Zealand. She unsuccessfully sought the Democratic Party presidential nomination in 2004. (http://www.galegroup.com)<br /><br /><a href="http://platial.com/post/34453">Map this on Platial</a><br /> 
        ]]>
        </description>
<georss:point> </georss:point>
<dc:creator></dc:creator>
<dc:date>2006-02-06 20:37:40.451095+00:00</dc:date>
</item>
<item rdf:about="http://platial.com/post/34470">
<link>http://platial.com/post/34470</link>
<title>Jemison Orbits the Earth</title>
<description>
        <![CDATA[
        1992/09/12. Mae Jemison becomes the first African American woman astronaut, spending more than a week orbiting Earth in the space shuttle Endeavour. Jemison moved with her family to Chicago at the age of three. There she was introduced to science by her uncle and developed interests throughout her childhood in anthropology, archaeology, evolution, and astronomy. While still a high school student, she became interested in biomedical engineering, and after graduating in 1973, at the age of 16, she entered Stanford University. There she received degrees in chemical engineering and African American studies (1977).

In 1977 Jemison entered medical school at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, where she pursued an interest in international medicine. After volunteering for a summer in a Cambodian refugee camp in Thailand, she studied in Kenya in 1979. She graduated from medical school in 1981, and, after a short time as a general practitioner with a Los Angeles medical group, she became a medical officer with the Peace Corps in West Africa. There she managed health care for Peace Corps and U.S. embassy personnel and worked in conjunction with the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control on several research projects, including development of a hepatitis B vaccine.

After returning to the United States, Jemison applied to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) to be an astronaut. In October 1986, she was 1 of 15 accepted out of 2,000 applicants. Jemison completed her training as a mission specialist with NASA in 1988. She became an astronaut office representative with the Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral, Florida, working to process space shuttles for launching and to verify shuttle software. Next, she was assigned to support a cooperative mission between the United States and Japan designed to conduct experiments in materials processing and the life sciences. In August 1992, STS-47 Spacelab J became the first successful joint U.S.-Japan space mission.

Jemison's maiden space flight came with the week-long September 1992 mission of the shuttle Endeavor. At that time she was the only African American woman astronaut. After completing her NASA mission, she formed the Jemison Group, to develop and market advanced technologies. (http://www.britannica.com)<br /><br /><a href="http://platial.com/post/34470">Map this on Platial</a><br /> 
        ]]>
        </description>
<georss:point> </georss:point>
<dc:creator></dc:creator>
<dc:date>2006-02-06 20:44:36.759366+00:00</dc:date>
</item>
<item rdf:about="http://platial.com/post/34474">
<link>http://platial.com/post/34474</link>
<title>Apartheid Ends</title>
<description>
        <![CDATA[
        1991/06/17. Most of the social legislation that provided the legal basis for apartheid is repealed, though segregation remains deeply entrenched in South African society. 

Although the government had the power to suppress virtually all criticism of its policies, there was always some opposition to apartheid within South Africa.

Apartheid also received international censure. South Africa was forced to withdraw from the Commonwealth in 1961 when it became apparent that other member countries would not accept its racial policies. In 1985 both the United Kingdom and the United States imposed selective economic sanctions on South Africa. In response to these and other pressures, the South African government abolished the “pass” laws in 1986, although blacks were still prohibited from living in designated white areas and the police were granted broad emergency powers.

In a more fundamental shift of policy, however, the government of South African president F.W. de Klerk in 1990–91 repealed most of the social legislation that provided the legal basis for apartheid, including the Population Registration Act. Systematic racial segregation remained deeply entrenched in South African society, though, and continued on a de facto basis. In 1993 a new constitution enfranchised blacks and other racial groups, and all-race national elections in 1994 produced a coalition government with a black majority. These developments marked the end of legislated apartheid. (http://www.britannica.com)<br /><br /><a href="http://platial.com/post/34474">Map this on Platial</a><br /> 
        ]]>
        </description>
<georss:point> </georss:point>
<dc:creator></dc:creator>
<dc:date>2006-02-06 22:59:32.360801+00:00</dc:date>
</item>
<item rdf:about="http://platial.com/post/34477">
<link>http://platial.com/post/34477</link>
<title>Art Blakey Dies</title>
<description>
        <![CDATA[
        1990/10/16. Jazz drummer Art Blakey dies. Since founding the Jazz Messengers in 1954, he is responsible for nurturing generations of young jazz musicians, including Clifford Brown, Jackie McLean, and Lee Morgan. (http://www.britannica.com)<br /><br /><a href="http://platial.com/post/34477">Map this on Platial</a><br /> 
        ]]>
        </description>
<georss:point> </georss:point>
<dc:creator></dc:creator>
<dc:date>2006-02-06 21:33:34.570727+00:00</dc:date>
</item>
<item rdf:about="http://platial.com/post/34478">
<link>http://platial.com/post/34478</link>
<title>Dinkins Elected Mayor</title>
<description>
        <![CDATA[
        1989/11/07. David Dinkins becomes the first African American to be elected mayor of New York City. 

After graduating from high school in 1945, Dinkins attempted to enlist in the U.S. Marine Corps but was told that the "Negro quota" had already been met. He eventually was drafted and served with the Marines. He went to Howard University on the GI Bill of Rights, studying mathematics (B.S., 1950). In 1953 Dinkins entered Brooklyn Law School and was introduced to politics when he married Joyce Burrows, the daughter of a New York state assemblyman. He joined a law firm and became increasingly involved with the Democratic Party.

Elected to a term in the state assembly in 1965, he later served as president of elections for New York City, as city clerk, and as Manhattan borough president before his successful bid for the mayor's office in 1989. Dinkins took office at a time when New York City was racked by racial discord. Both ethnic tensions and crime statistics increased during his term, and he became the first black mayor of a major U.S. city to be denied reelection. (http://www.britannica.com)
<br /><br /><a href="http://platial.com/post/34478">Map this on Platial</a><br /> 
        ]]>
        </description>
<georss:point> </georss:point>
<dc:creator></dc:creator>
<dc:date>2006-02-06 21:38:05.887845+00:00</dc:date>
</item>
<item rdf:about="http://platial.com/post/34513">
<link>http://platial.com/post/34513</link>
<title>Wilder Governor of Virginia</title>
<description>
        <![CDATA[
        1989/11/07. L. Douglas Wilder elected governor of Virginia. The grandson of slaves, he was named after abolitionist-orator Frederick Douglass and poet Paul Laurence Dunbar. He was the first elected African American governor in United States history. During his administration, Wilder was praised for his sound fiscal management and his ability to balance the state budget during difficult economic times. He sponsored new construction projects at many of Virginia's colleges and universities, mental health facilities, and state parks. (http://www.galegroup.com)<br /><br /><a href="http://platial.com/post/34513">Map this on Platial</a><br /> 
        ]]>
        </description>
<georss:point> </georss:point>
<dc:creator></dc:creator>
<dc:date>2006-02-07 06:15:46.827876+00:00</dc:date>
</item>
<item rdf:about="http://platial.com/post/34514">
<link>http://platial.com/post/34514</link>
<title>Jameson Heads Ailey Dance Theater</title>
<description>
        <![CDATA[
        1989. Modern dancer Judith Jamison becomes the artistic director of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, following Ailey's death. 

Jamison began taking dance lessons at age six at the Judimar School of Dance. She left her studies at Fisk University to attend the Philadelphia Dance Academy (now the University of the Arts), where she later became a visiting distinguished professor. Discovered by Agnes de Mille, Jamison made her New York City debut with the American Ballet Theatre. She performed her debut with the Alvin Ailey Dance Company in "Conga Tango Palace" in 1965. Her height (5 feet 10 inches) and elegant, striking presence helped make her an immediate success with the company. In 1971 Ailey choreographed Cry expressly for Jamison; a 15-minute solo depicting the struggles of black women, it became her signature piece. She performed extensively both in the United States and abroad.

In 1972 Jamison married Miguel Godreau, a former member of the AAADT. She left the Ailey company in 1980 to star in the Broadway musical hit Sophisticated Ladies. She also began to choreograph dances, and the AAADT premiered her first work, Divining, in 1984. Her other works include Just Call Me Dance (1984), Into the Life (1987), Hymn (1993), Sweet Release (1996), and Double Exposure (2000). She established her own 12-member troupe, the Jamison Project, in 1988. After Ailey's death in 1989, Jamison became artistic director of the Ailey troupe and its school. In doing so, she became the first African American woman to direct a major modern dance company. Jamison's autobiography, Dancing Spirit, written with Howard Kaplan, was published in 1993. The recipient of numerous awards, Jamison received a Kennedy Center Honor in 1999 and the National Medal of Arts in 2001. (http://www.britannica.com/)<br /><br /><a href="http://platial.com/post/34514">Map this on Platial</a><br /> 
        ]]>
        </description>
<georss:point> </georss:point>
<dc:creator></dc:creator>
<dc:date>2006-02-07 06:19:56.677168+00:00</dc:date>
</item>
<item rdf:about="http://platial.com/post/34516">
<link>http://platial.com/post/34516</link>
<title>Joyner Wins Three Gold Medals</title>
<description>
        <![CDATA[
        1988. Runner Florence Griffith Joyner captures three gold medals and a silver in the Seoul Olympics. Griffith started running at age seven, chasing jackrabbits to increase her speed. In 1980 she entered the University of California, Los Angeles (B.A., 1983), to train with coach Bob Kersee. At the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles, she won a silver medal in the 200-metre race and quickly became a media celebrity with her 6-inch (15-cm) decorated fingernails and eye-catching racing suits. Disappointed with her performance, however, she went into semiretirement. In 1987 she rededicated herself to the sport, adopting an intense weight-training program and altering her starting technique. That same year she married Al Joyner, winner of the 1984 gold medal in the triple jump and brother of Jackie Joyner-Kersee, a heptathlon champion. The changes produced dramatic results. At the 1988 Olympic trials, Griffith Joyner set a world record in the 100-metre sprint (10.49 seconds), beating the old mark by 0.27 second and improving her previous best by more than half a second. Later that year at the Olympics in South Korea, she captured three gold medals (100 metres, 200 metres, and 4 ´ 100-metre relay) and a silver (4 ´ 400-metre relay). In 1988 Griffith Joyner received the Sullivan Award as the nation's top amateur performer. Though her remarkable performances sparked rumours of steroid use, drug tests revealed no banned substances.

After retiring in 1989, Griffith Joyner established a foundation for underprivileged children and from 1993 to 1995 served as the cochair of the President's Council on Physical Fitness. A comeback attempt in 1996 ended following a leg injury. She was inducted into the Track and Field Hall of Fame in 1995. (http://www.britannica.com/)<br /><br /><a href="http://platial.com/post/34516">Map this on Platial</a><br /> 
        ]]>
        </description>
<georss:point> </georss:point>
<dc:creator></dc:creator>
<dc:date>2006-02-07 07:46:18.356614+00:00</dc:date>
</item>
<item rdf:about="http://platial.com/post/34517">
<link>http://platial.com/post/34517</link>
<title>Gregory commands Space Shuttle</title>
<description>
        <![CDATA[
        1987. Frederick Drew Gregory was the first African American to command a space shuttle. He was sworn in on August 12, 2002 as NASA's Deputy Administrator. Not only was Mr. Gregory the first person to fill the position in ten years, he was also the first African-American Deputy Administrator. On February 20, 2005, he became the Acting Administrator of NASA. He assumed this position upon the resignation of the Administrator. (http://www.hq.nasa.gov and http://www.galegroup.com) <br /><br /><a href="http://platial.com/post/34517">Map this on Platial</a><br /> 
        ]]>
        </description>
<georss:point> </georss:point>
<dc:creator></dc:creator>
<dc:date>2006-02-07 07:47:23.857067+00:00</dc:date>
</item>
<item rdf:about="http://platial.com/post/34519">
<link>http://platial.com/post/34519</link>
<title>Majic Johnson MVP</title>
<description>
        <![CDATA[
        1987. Earvin "Magic" Johnson is named the National Basketball Association's Most Valuable Player. He earned five NBA Championships and entered the NBA Hall of Fame in 2000. He retired from the L.A. Lakers when he learned that he had contracted the HIV virus. He has founded the Magic Johnson foundation, dedicated to  improving the academic achievement of disadvantaged young people. (http://www.pbs.org)<br /><br /><a href="http://platial.com/post/34519">Map this on Platial</a><br /> 
        ]]>
        </description>
<georss:point> </georss:point>
<dc:creator></dc:creator>
<dc:date>2006-02-07 07:49:25.835317+00:00</dc:date>
</item>
<item rdf:about="http://platial.com/post/34520">
<link>http://platial.com/post/34520</link>
<title>Spike Lee's Cannes Award</title>
<description>
        <![CDATA[
        1986 Spike Lee's film "She's Gotta Have It" wins him the best new director award at the ultra-prestigious Cannes Film Festival. (http://www.pbs.org)<br /><br /><a href="http://platial.com/post/34520">Map this on Platial</a><br /> 
        ]]>
        </description>
<georss:point> </georss:point>
<dc:creator></dc:creator>
<dc:date>2006-02-07 07:50:27.456277+00:00</dc:date>
</item>
<item rdf:about="http://platial.com/post/34521">
<link>http://platial.com/post/34521</link>
<title>MLK Day a Holiday</title>
<description>
        <![CDATA[
        1986/01/20. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s birthday is made into a national holiday. (http://www.pbs.org)<br /><br /><a href="http://platial.com/post/34521">Map this on Platial</a><br /> 
        ]]>
        </description>
<georss:point> </georss:point>
<dc:creator></dc:creator>
<dc:date>2006-02-07 07:51:38.425331+00:00</dc:date>
</item>
<item rdf:about="http://platial.com/post/34524">
<link>http://platial.com/post/34524</link>
<title>Alice Walker Earns Pulitzer</title>
<description>
        <![CDATA[
        1983. Writer Alice Walker receives the Pulitzer Prize for The Color Purple. Walker was the eighth child of African American sharecroppers. While growing up she was accidentally blinded in one eye, and her mother gave her a typewriter, allowing her to write instead of doing chores. She received a scholarship to attend Spelman College, where she studied for two years before transferring to Sarah Lawrence College. After graduating in 1965, Walker moved to Mississippi and became involved in the civil rights movement. She also began teaching and publishing short stories and essays. She married in 1967, but the couple divorced in 1976.

Walker's first book of poetry, Once, appeared in 1968, and her first novel, The Third Life of Grange Copeland (1970), a narrative that spans 60 years and three generations, followed two years later. A second volume of poetry, Revolutionary Petunias and Other Poems, and her first collection of short stories, In Love and Trouble: Stories of Black Woman, both appeared in 1973. The latter bears witness to sexist violence and abuse in the African American community. After moving to New York, Walker completed Meridian (1976), a novel describing the coming of age of several civil rights workers in the 1960s.

Walker later moved to California, where she wrote perhaps her most popular novel, The Color Purple (1982). Written in epistolary form, the novel depicts the growing up and self-realization of an African American woman between 1909 and 1947 in a town in Georgia. The book won a Pulitzer Prize and was adapted into a film by Steven Spielberg in 1985. Walker also cofounded Wild Tree Press (1984–88). Her later works include In Search of Our Mother's Gardens: Womanist Prose (1983), The Temple of My Familiar (1989), Possessing the Secret of Joy (1992), and By the Light of My Father's Smile (1998). Walker also wrote juvenile fiction and critical essays on such women writers as Flannery O'Connor and Zora Neale Hurston. (http://www.britannica.com)<br /><br /><a href="http://platial.com/post/34524">Map this on Platial</a><br /> 
        ]]>
        </description>
<georss:point> </georss:point>
<dc:creator></dc:creator>
<dc:date>2006-02-07 07:57:29.281718+00:00</dc:date>
</item>
<item rdf:about="http://platial.com/post/34526">
<link>http://platial.com/post/34526</link>
<title>Vasnessa Williams is Miss America</title>
<description>
        <![CDATA[
        1983 Vanessa Williams becomes the first African American Miss America. (http://www.pbs.org)<br /><br /><a href="http://platial.com/post/34526">Map this on Platial</a><br /> 
        ]]>
        </description>
<georss:point> </georss:point>
<dc:creator></dc:creator>
<dc:date>2006-02-07 07:59:25.266674+00:00</dc:date>
</item>
<item rdf:about="http://platial.com/post/34527">
<link>http://platial.com/post/34527</link>
<title>Miami Race Riots</title>
<description>
        <![CDATA[
        1980/05/18. A three-day race riot breaks out after an all-white jury acquits four white Miami police officers of killing Arthur McDuffie, a black insurance salesman. The police had beaten him with their flashlights and billyclubs, and he died in the hospital. The riot resulted in 15 deaths in Miami, Florida. This was the worst riot since those in Watts and Detroit in the 1960s. (http://www.galegroup.com and http://www.rotten.com)<br /><br /><a href="http://platial.com/post/34527">Map this on Platial</a><br /> 
        ]]>
        </description>
<georss:point> </georss:point>
<dc:creator></dc:creator>
<dc:date>2006-02-07 08:00:14.109078+00:00</dc:date>
</item>
<item rdf:about="http://platial.com/post/34528">
<link>http://platial.com/post/34528</link>
<title>Basquiat Celebrated</title>
<description>
        <![CDATA[
        1980 Nineteen-year-old artist Jean-Michel Basquiat wins critical and art-community acclaim for a collection of his paintings shown in a Manhattan exhibition of underground artists. (http://www.pbs.org)<br /><br /><a href="http://platial.com/post/34528">Map this on Platial</a><br /> 
        ]]>
        </description>
<georss:point> </georss:point>
<dc:creator></dc:creator>
<dc:date>2006-02-07 08:01:09.008887+00:00</dc:date>
</item>
<item rdf:about="http://platial.com/post/34529">
<link>http://platial.com/post/34529</link>
<title>Rapper's Delight a Hit</title>
<description>
        <![CDATA[
        1979. The song "Rapper's Delight," by the Sugar Hill Gang, helps bring rap to national prominence. "Rapper's Delight" was a #36 hit on the US pop chart and a #4 hit on the US R&B chart in 1979. (http://www.pbs.org)<br /><br /><a href="http://platial.com/post/34529">Map this on Platial</a><br /> 
        ]]>
        </description>
<georss:point> </georss:point>
<dc:creator></dc:creator>
<dc:date>2006-02-07 08:02:19.899491+00:00</dc:date>
</item>
<item rdf:about="http://platial.com/post/34530">
<link>http://platial.com/post/34530</link>
<title>Roots Tops Ratings</title>
<description>
        <![CDATA[
        1977/02/03. This was the eighth and final night for the miniseries based onAlex Haley's Roots: The Saga of an American Family (1976). This final episode achieved the highest ratings ever for a single program. It was one of the most popular shows in the history of American television.

Although his parents were teachers, Haley was an indifferent student. He began writing to avoid boredom during voyages while serving in the U.S. Coast Guard (1939–59). His first major work, The Autobiography of Malcolm X (1965), was an authoritative and widely read narrative based on Haley's interviews with the Black Muslim spokesman. The work is recognized as a classic of African American literature.

Haley's greatest success was Roots: The Saga of an American Family (1976). This saga covers seven American generations, from the enslavement of Haley's African ancestors to his own genealogical quest. The work forcefully shows relationships between generations and between races. Roots was adapted as a multi-episode television program, which, when first broadcast in January 1977, became one of the most popular shows in the history of American television and galvanized attention on African American issues and history. That same year Haley won a special Pulitzer Prize. A successful sequel was first broadcast in February 1979 as Roots: The Next Generations.

Roots spurred much interest in family history, and Haley created the Kinte Foundation (1972) to store records that aid in tracing black genealogy. Haley later admitted that his saga was partly fictional. (http://www.galegroup.com).<br /><br /><a href="http://platial.com/post/34530">Map this on Platial</a><br /> 
        ]]>
        </description>
<georss:point> </georss:point>
<dc:creator></dc:creator>
<dc:date>2006-02-07 08:03:45.376342+00:00</dc:date>
</item>
<item rdf:about="http://platial.com/post/34532">
<link>http://platial.com/post/34532</link>
<title>Robinson Manages Cleveland Indians</title>
<description>
        <![CDATA[
        1975. Frank Robinson becomes the first African American manager of a Major League Baseball team, the Cleveland Indians. As a youth, Robinson played sandlot and American Legion Junior League baseball in Oakland, California, and at McClymonds High School, where he also played football and basketball. The right-hander played third base and pitched occasionally. After graduation he was signed by the National League Cincinnati Reds and played with their minor league teams (third base and outfield) until he joined the parent club in 1956, the year he was awarded Rookie of the Year honours. He batted more than .300 in 5 of 10 years before he was traded to the American League Baltimore Orioles in 1966. In his first season with Baltimore, he won the Triple Crown—leading the league in home runs (49), runs batted in (122), and batting average (.316). He remained with Baltimore through 1971 and then played with the National League Los Angeles Dodgers (1972) and the American League California Angels (1973–74) and Cleveland Indians (1974–76). With 586 career home runs, Robinson ranked fourth in home runs hit, after Hank Aaron (755), Babe Ruth (714), and Willie Mays (660) when he retired in 1976.

Robinson began managing the Indians in 1975, the first African American to manage a major league team. He had begun his managing career in winter baseball for the Santurce team in the Puerto Rican League in 1968 and had also coached at Baltimore and in the minor leagues for the International League. In 1981 he became manager of the National League San Francisco Giants. In 1984 Robinson returned to the Orioles, working as a coach, as a manager, and in the front office for the team's upper management. He stayed with the Orioles until the end of the 1995 season. In 2000 Robinson was put in charge of discipline as a vice president of Major League Baseball,meting out fines and suspensions in controversial imbroglios, and in 2002 he became manager of the Montreal Expos. Robinson was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York, in 1982. (http://www.britannica.com)<br /><br /><a href="http://platial.com/post/34532">Map this on Platial</a><br /> 
        ]]>
        </description>
<georss:point> </georss:point>
<dc:creator></dc:creator>
<dc:date>2006-02-07 08:07:22.074962+00:00</dc:date>
</item>
<item rdf:about="http://platial.com/post/34533">
<link>http://platial.com/post/34533</link>
<title>Ashe Wins Wimbledon</title>
<description>
        <![CDATA[
        1975. Tennis player Arthur Ashe wins the singles title at Wimbledon, becoming the first African American man to win the prestigious championship. Ashe began to play tennis at the age of seven in a neighbourhood park. He was coached by Walter Johnson of Lynchburg, Va., who had coached tennis champion Althea Gibson. Ashe moved to St. Louis, Mo., where he was coached by Richard Hudlin, before he entered the University of California at Los Angeles on a tennis scholarship. In 1963 Ashe won the U.S. hard-court singles championship; in 1965 he took the intercollegiate singles and doubles titles; and in 1967 he won the U.S. clay-court singles championship. In 1968 he captured the U.S. (amateur) singles and open singles championships. He played on the U.S. Davis Cup team (1963–70, 1975, 1977–78) and helped the U.S. team to win the Davis Cup challenge (final) round in 1968, 1969, and 1970. In the latter year he became a professional.

His criticism of South African apartheid racial policy led to denial of permission to play in that country's open tournament, and, as a consequence, on March 23, 1970, South Africa was excluded from Davis Cup competition. In 1975, when he won the Wimbledon singles and the World Championship singles, he was ranked first in world tennis. After retiring from play in 1980, he became captain of the U.S. Davis Cup team, a position he held from 1981 to 1985.

Ashe underwent coronary bypass operations in 1979 and 1983. In April 1992 he revealed that he had become infected with the virus that causes AIDS, probably through a tainted blood transfusion received during one of those operations. For the remainder of his life, Ashe devoted considerable time to efforts to educate the public about the disease. (http://www.britannica.com)<br /><br /><a href="http://platial.com/post/34533">Map this on Platial</a><br /> 
        ]]>
        </description>
<georss:point> </georss:point>
<dc:creator></dc:creator>
<dc:date>2006-02-07 08:17:33.066995+00:00</dc:date>
</item>
<item rdf:about="http://platial.com/post/34534">
<link>http://platial.com/post/34534</link>
<title>Hank Aaron's 715th Home Run</title>
<description>
        <![CDATA[
        1974/04/08. Henry "Hank" Aaron hit his 715th home run to become the all-time leading hitter of home runs. A former member of the Negro American League's Indianapolis Clowns, he was the last Negro league player to also play in the major leagues. (http://www.galegroup.com)<br /><br /><a href="http://platial.com/post/34534">Map this on Platial</a><br /> 
        ]]>
        </description>
<georss:point> </georss:point>
<dc:creator></dc:creator>
<dc:date>2006-02-07 08:19:00.366939+00:00</dc:date>
</item>
<item rdf:about="http://platial.com/post/34857">
<link>http://platial.com/post/34857</link>
<title>Chisholm Runs for President</title>
<description>
        <![CDATA[
        1972. Shirley Chisholm, a member of the House of Representatives from New York, is the first African American woman to make a serious bid for the U.S. presidency. Shirley St. Hill was the daughter of immigrants. Her father was from British Guiana (now Guyana) and her mother from Barbados. She grew up in Barbados and in her native Brooklyn, New York, and graduated from Brooklyn College. While teaching nursery school and serving as director of the Friends Day Nursery in Brooklyn, she studied elementary education at Columbia University and married Conrad Q. Chisholm in 1949 (divorced 1977). An education consultant for New York City's day-care division, she was also active with community and political groups, including the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and her district's Unity Democratic Club. In 1964–68 she represented her Brooklyn district in the New York state legislature.

In 1968 Chisholm was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, defeating the civil rights leader James Farmer. In Congress she quickly became known as a strong liberal who opposed weapons development and the war in Vietnam and favoured full-employment proposals. As a candidate for the Democratic nomination for U.S. president in 1972, she won 152 delegates before withdrawing from the race.

Chisholm, a founder of the National Women's Political Caucus, supported the Equal Rights Amendment and legalized abortions throughout her congressional career, which lasted from 1969 to 1983. She wrote the autobiographical works Unbought and Unbossed (1970) and The Good Fight (1973). (http://www.britannica.com)

After her retirement from Congress, Chisholm remained active on the lecture circuit. She held the position of Purington Professor at Mount Holyoke College (1983–87) and was a visiting scholar at Spelman College (1985). In 1993 she was invited by President Bill Clinton to serve as ambassador to Jamaica but declined because of poor health.

<br /><br /><a href="http://platial.com/post/34857">Map this on Platial</a><br /> 
        ]]>
        </description>
<georss:point> </georss:point>
<dc:creator></dc:creator>
<dc:date>2006-02-10 06:32:06.049587+00:00</dc:date>
</item>
<item rdf:about="http://platial.com/post/34858">
<link>http://platial.com/post/34858</link>
<title>Equal Employment Act</title>
<description>
        <![CDATA[
        1972. The Equal Employment Opportunity Act is passed, prohibiting job discrimination on the basis of, among other things, race, and laying the groundwork for affirmative action. (http://www.pbs.org)<br /><br /><a href="http://platial.com/post/34858">Map this on Platial</a><br /> 
        ]]>
        </description>
<georss:point> </georss:point>
<dc:creator></dc:creator>
<dc:date>2006-02-10 06:33:16.930963+00:00</dc:date>
</item>
<item rdf:about="http://platial.com/post/34864">
<link>http://platial.com/post/34864</link>
<title>Swann v Board of Education</title>
<description>
        <![CDATA[
        1971. In Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education the Supreme Court upholds the constitutionality of court-ordered plans to achieve desegregation of schools, affirming the busing of schoolchildren in Charlotte, North Carolina. The Supreme Court of the United States unanimously upheld busing programs that aimed to speed up the racial integration of public schools in the United States.

In 1954 the Supreme Court ruled in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka that racial segregation in public schools was unconstitutional. However, because of racially segregated housing patterns and resistance by local leaders, many schools remained as segregated in the late 1960s as they were at the time of the Brown decision.

In Charlotte, North Carolina, for example, in the mid-1960s less than 5 percent of African American children attended integrated schools. Indeed, busing was used by white officials to maintain segregation. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), on behalf of Vera and Darius Swann, the parents of a six-year-old child, sued the Charlotte-Mecklenburg school district to allow their son to attend Seversville Elementary School, the school closest to their home and then one of Charlotte's few integrated schools. James McMillan, the federal district judge in the case, ruled in favour of the Swanns and oversaw the implementation of a busing strategy that integrated the district's schools. McMillan's decision was appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which upheld it. The busing strategy was adopted elsewhere in the United States and played an instrumental role in integrating U.S. public schools. (http://www.britannica.com)
<br /><br /><a href="http://platial.com/post/34864">Map this on Platial</a><br /> 
        ]]>
        </description>
<georss:point> </georss:point>
<dc:creator></dc:creator>
<dc:date>2006-02-10 10:00:28.583765+00:00</dc:date>
</item>
<item rdf:about="http://platial.com/post/34865">
<link>http://platial.com/post/34865</link>
<title>Angela Davis Acquitted</title>
<description>
        <![CDATA[
        "1972. This militant American black activist gained an international reputation during her imprisonment and trial on conspiracy charges in 1970–72.

The daughter of Alabama schoolteachers, Davis studied at home and abroad (1961–67) before becoming a doctoral candidate at the University of California, San Diego, under the Marxist professor Herbert Marcuse. Because of her political opinions and despite an excellent record as an instructor at the university's Los Angeles campus, the California Board of Regents in 1970 refused to renew her appointment as lecturer in philosophy. In 1991, however, Davis became a professor in the field of the history of consciousness at the University of California, Santa Cruz; in 1995, amid much controversy she was appointed a presidential chair.

Championing the cause of black prisoners in the 1960s and '70s, Davis grew particularly attached to a young revolutionary, George Jackson, one of the so-called Soledad Brothers (after Soledad Prison). Jackson's brother Jonathan was among the four persons killed—including the trial judge—in an abortive escape and kidnapping attempt from the Hall of Justice in Marin county, California (August 7, 1970). Suspected of complicity, Davis was sought for arrest and became one of the Federal Bureau of Investigation's most wanted criminals. Arrested in New York City in October 1970, she was returned to California to face charges of kidnapping, murder, and conspiracy; she was acquitted of all charges by an all-white jury.

In 1974 she published Angela Davis: An Autobiography (reprinted 1988). In 1980 she ran for U.S. vice president on the unsuccessful Communist Party ticket. Among her writings are the books Women, Race, & Class (1981), Women, Culture, and Politics (1989), and Blues Legacies and Black Feminism: Gertrude ""Ma"" Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Billie Holiday (1998). (http://www.britannica.com)<br /><br /><a href="http://platial.com/post/34865">Map this on Platial</a><br /> 
        ]]>
        </description>
<georss:point> </georss:point>
<dc:creator></dc:creator>
<dc:date>2006-02-10 10:01:50.14917+00:00</dc:date>
</item>
<item rdf:about="http://platial.com/post/34867">
<link>http://platial.com/post/34867</link>
<title>Shaft</title>
<description>
        <![CDATA[
        1971 Filmmaker/photographer Gordon Parks' "blaxploitation" film Shaft appears, to be followed by a wave of similarly themed movies. (http://www.pbs.org)<br /><br /><a href="http://platial.com/post/34867">Map this on Platial</a><br /> 
        ]]>
        </description>
<georss:point> </georss:point>
<dc:creator></dc:creator>
<dc:date>2006-02-10 10:04:14.980597+00:00</dc:date>
</item>
<item rdf:about="http://platial.com/post/34869">
<link>http://platial.com/post/34869</link>
<title>Seale Bound and Gagged</title>
<description>
        <![CDATA[
        1969. Black Panther Party cofounder Bobby Seale is ordered bound and gagged by the judge after Seale protests that he was being denied his constitutional right to counsel during his trial for conspiracy to incite rioting at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago the previous year.
 Seale was one of a generation of young African-American radicals who broke away from the traditionally nonviolent Civil Rights Movement to preach a doctrine of militant black empowerment. Following the dismissal of murder charges against him in 1971, Seale somewhat moderated his more militant views and devoted his time to effecting change from within the system.

Seale grew up in Dallas and in California. Following service in the U.S. Air Force, he entered Merritt College, in Oakland, Calif. There his radicalism took root in 1962, when he first heard Malcolm X speak. Seale helped found the Black Panthers in 1966. Noted for their violent views, they also ran medical clinics and served free breakfasts to school children, among other programs.

In 1969 Seale was indicted in Chicago for conspiracy to incite riots during the Democratic national convention the previous year. The court refused to allow him to have his choice of lawyer. When Seale repeatedly rose to insist that he was being denied his constitutional right to counsel, the judge ordered him bound and gagged. He was convicted of 16 counts of contempt and sentenced to four years in prison. In 1970–71 he and a codefendant were tried for the 1969 murder of a Black Panther suspected of being a police informer. The six-month-long trial ended with a hung jury.

Following his release from prison, Seale renounced violence as a means to an end and announced his intention to work within the political process. He ran for mayor of Oakland in 1973, finishing second. As the Black Panther Party faded from public view, Seale took on a quieter role, working to improve social services in black neighbourhoods and to improve the environment. Seale's writings include such diverse works as Seize the Time (1970), a history of the Black Panther movement and Barbeque'n with Bobby (1988), a cookbook. (http://www.britannica.com)<br /><br /><a href="http://platial.com/post/34869">Map this on Platial</a><br /> 
        ]]>
        </description>
<georss:point> </georss:point>
<dc:creator></dc:creator>
<dc:date>2006-02-10 10:07:11.815539+00:00</dc:date>
</item>
<item rdf:about="http://platial.com/post/34871">
<link>http://platial.com/post/34871</link>
<title>Olympic Black Power Salute</title>
<description>
        <![CDATA[
        "
1968. After winning the gold medal, sprinter Tommie Smith and teammate John Carlos give a black-power salute during the awards ceremony, leading to their suspension by the U.S. Olympic Committee. (http://www.britannica.com)
<br /><br /><a href="http://platial.com/post/34871">Map this on Platial</a><br /> 
        ]]>
        </description>
<georss:point> </georss:point>
<dc:creator></dc:creator>
<dc:date>2006-02-10 10:09:28.359395+00:00</dc:date>
</item>
<item rdf:about="http://platial.com/post/34872">
<link>http://platial.com/post/34872</link>
<title>Civil Rights Act of 1968</title>
<description>
        <![CDATA[
        1968/04/11. President Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act of 1968, prohibiting discrimination in the sale, rental, and financing of housing. (http://www.infoplease.com)<br /><br /><a href="http://platial.com/post/34872">Map this on Platial</a><br /> 
        ]]>
        </description>
<georss:point> </georss:point>
<dc:creator></dc:creator>
<dc:date>2006-02-10 10:10:19.565635+00:00</dc:date>
</item>
<item rdf:about="http://platial.com/post/34874">
<link>http://platial.com/post/34874</link>
<title>R-E-S-P-E-C-T</title>
<description>
        <![CDATA[
        1967. Aretha Franklin records a series of hit singles, including her best-known song, "Respect." As a civil-rights-minded nation lent greater support to black urban music, Franklin was crowned the "Queen of Soul." "Respect," her 1967 cover of Otis Redding's spirited composition, became an anthem operating on personal, sexual, and racial levels. "Think" (1968), which Franklin wrote herself, also had more than one meaning. For the next half-dozen years, she became a hit maker of unprecedented proportions; she was "Lady Soul." (http://www.pbs.org)<br /><br /><a href="http://platial.com/post/34874">Map this on Platial</a><br /> 
        ]]>
        </description>
<georss:point> </georss:point>
<dc:creator></dc:creator>
<dc:date>2006-02-10 10:13:07.675739+00:00</dc:date>
</item>
<item rdf:about="http://platial.com/post/34876">
<link>http://platial.com/post/34876</link>
<title>Summer of Riots</title>
<description>
        <![CDATA[
        1967, May 1-October 1. This was the worst summer for racial disturbances in United States history. More than 40 riots and 100 other disturbances occurred. (http://www.galegroup.com)<br /><br /><a href="http://platial.com/post/34876">Map this on Platial</a><br /> 
        ]]>
        </description>
<georss:point> </georss:point>
<dc:creator></dc:creator>
<dc:date>2006-02-10 10:15:50.094313+00:00</dc:date>
</item>
<item rdf:about="http://platial.com/post/34878">
<link>http://platial.com/post/34878</link>
<title>Hendrix at Monterey</title>
<description>
        <![CDATA[
        1967/06/16-18. Blues and rock guitarist Jimi Hendrix makes his spectacular debut at the Monterey International Pop Festival, following the successful release of his first album, Are You Experienced? (http://www.britannica.com)<br /><br /><a href="http://platial.com/post/34878">Map this on Platial</a><br /> 
        ]]>
        </description>
<georss:point> </georss:point>
<dc:creator></dc:creator>
<dc:date>2006-02-10 10:18:21.231689+00:00</dc:date>
</item>
<item rdf:about="http://platial.com/post/34879">
<link>http://platial.com/post/34879</link>
<title>Ali Conscientious Objector</title>
<description>
        <![CDATA[
        1967. Heavyweight champion Muhammad Ali refuses to submit to induction into the armed forces. Convicted of violating the Selective Service Act, Ali is barred from the ring and stripped of his title. He said, "I ain't got no quarrel with them Vietcong." Subsequently he said:"No, I am not going 10,000 miles to help murder kill and burn other people to simply help continue the domination of white slavemasters over dark people the world over. This is the day and age when such evil injustice must come to an end." (http://www.aavw.org/protest/homepage_ali.html)<br /><br /><a href="http://platial.com/post/34879">Map this on Platial</a><br /> 
        ]]>
        </description>
<georss:point> </georss:point>
<dc:creator></dc:creator>
<dc:date>2006-02-22 15:52:15.17179+00:00</dc:date>
</item>
<item rdf:about="http://platial.com/post/34880">
<link>http://platial.com/post/34880</link>
<title>Bond Sworn In</title>
<description>
        <![CDATA[
        1967/01/09. After being denied his seat in the Georgia state legislature (although duly elected) for opposing U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War, civil rights activist Julian Bond is finally sworn in on January 9.<br /><br /><a href="http://platial.com/post/34880">Map this on Platial</a><br /> 
        ]]>
        </description>
<georss:point> </georss:point>
<dc:creator></dc:creator>
<dc:date>2006-02-10 10:21:12.948165+00:00</dc:date>
</item>
<item rdf:about="http://platial.com/post/34881">
<link>http://platial.com/post/34881</link>
<title>Kwanzaa</title>
<description>
        <![CDATA[
        1966. The African American holiday of Kwanzaa, patterned after various African harvest festivals, is created by Maulana Karenga, a black-studies professor at California State University at Long Beach. adaptation of an African harvest festival, celebrated from December 26 to January 1. It was created in 1966 by Maulana Karenga, a professor of black studies at California State University in Long Beach, who added an additional “a” to the end of the name to distinguish it from the African festival. Although Kwanzaa is primarily an African American holiday, it has also come to be celebrated outside the United States, particularly in Caribbean and other countries where there are large numbers of descendants of Africans. It was conceived as a nonpolitical and nonreligious holiday for the affirmation of African family and social values. The holiday is not considered to be a substitute for Christmas.

Each of the days of the celebration is dedicated to one of the seven principles of Kwanzaa: unity (umoja), self-determination (kujichagulia), collective responsibility (ujima), cooperative economics (ujamaa), purpose (nia), creativity (kuumba), and faith (imani). There also are seven symbols of the holiday: fruits, vegetables, and nuts; straw place mats; a candleholder; ears of corn (maize); gifts; a communal cup signifying unity; and seven candles in the African colours of red, green, and black. On each day the family comes together to light one of the candles in the kinara, or candleholder, and to discuss the principle for the day. At the end of the celebration, on December 31, families join in a community feast called the karamu. Some participants wear traditional African clothing during the celebration. (http://www.britannica.com)<br /><br /><a href="http://platial.com/post/34881">Map this on Platial</a><br /> 
        ]]>
        </description>
<georss:point> </georss:point>
<dc:creator></dc:creator>
<dc:date>2006-02-10 10:22:34.499225+00:00</dc:date>
</item>
<item rdf:about="http://platial.com/post/34882">
<link>http://platial.com/post/34882</link>
<title>Russel Coaches Celtics</title>
<description>
        <![CDATA[
        1966. Bill Russell, one of the greatest defensive centres in the history of basketball, becomes the first black coach of a major professional sports team (the Boston Celtics) in the United States. Reared in Oakland, Calif., Russell led the University of San Francisco to National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) championships in two consecutive seasons (1954-55 and 1955-56). After playing on the U.S. team that won the 1956 Olympic basketball gold medal in Melbourne, he joined the Boston Celtics of the National Basketball Association (NBA). With Russell at centre, the Celtics won 11 NBA championships in 13 seasons. He coached the last two of those championship teams but retired as coach in 1969.

On five occasions Russell was voted the most valuable player in the NBA. In 1967 the Associated Press named him one of the five members of its All-America collegiate team for the preceding 20 years; later the AP selected him the outstanding professional basketball player of the 1960s. He was coach and general manager of the Seattle SuperSonics (1973–77). His autobiography, Second Wind: The Memoirs of an Opinionated Man, was published in 1979. After retirement from basketball, Russell was a network sports announcer, wrote a syndicated column, and did television news commentary. (http://www.britannica.com)<br /><br /><a href="http://platial.com/post/34882">Map this on Platial</a><br /> 
        ]]>
        </description>
<georss:point> </georss:point>
<dc:creator></dc:creator>
<dc:date>2006-02-10 10:23:43.007839+00:00</dc:date>
</item>
<item rdf:about="http://platial.com/post/34883">
<link>http://platial.com/post/34883</link>
<title>Panther party Founded</title>
<description>
        <![CDATA[
        1966. The Black Panther Party for Self-Defense is founded in Oakland, California, by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale, with the original purpose of protecting residents from acts of police brutality. (http://www.britannica.com)<br /><br /><a href="http://platial.com/post/34883">Map this on Platial</a><br /> 
        ]]>
        </description>
<georss:point> </georss:point>
<dc:creator></dc:creator>
<dc:date>2006-02-10 10:24:50.443502+00:00</dc:date>
</item>
<item rdf:about="http://platial.com/post/34886">
<link>http://platial.com/post/34886</link>
<title>Bloody Sunday</title>
<description>
        <![CDATA[
        1966/03/07. State troopers violently attack peaceful demonstrators led by Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., as they try to cross the Pettus Bridge bridge in Selma, Ala. Fifty marchers are hospitalized on "Bloody Sunday," after police use tear gas, whips, and clubs against them. The march is considered the catalyst for pushing through the voting rights act five months later. (http://www.infoplease.com) <br /><br /><a href="http://platial.com/post/34886">Map this on Platial</a><br /> 
        ]]>
        </description>
<georss:point> </georss:point>
<dc:creator></dc:creator>
<dc:date>2006-02-10 10:28:15.486753+00:00</dc:date>
</item>
<item rdf:about="http://platial.com/post/35101">
<link>http://platial.com/post/35101</link>
<title>Watts</title>
<description>
        <![CDATA[
        1965/08/11-21. The Watts riots left 34 dead, more than 3,500 arrested, and property damage of about 225 million dollars. With the arrest of a 21 year old African American, Los Angeles's South Central neighborhood of Watts erupted into violence. On August 11, 1965, a Los Angeles police officer flagged down motorist Marquette Frye, whom he suspected of being intoxicated. When a crowd of onlookers began to taunt the policeman, a second officer was called in. According to eyewitness accounts, the second officer struck crowd members with his baton, and news of the act of police brutality soon spread throughout the neighborhood. The incident, combined with escalating racial tensions, overcrowding in the neighborhood, and a summer heat wave, sparked violence on a massive scale. Despite attempts the following day aimed at quelling anti police sentiment, residents began looting and burning local stores. (http://www.infoplease.com)<br /><br /><a href="http://platial.com/post/35101">Map this on Platial</a><br /> 
        ]]>
        </description>
<georss:point> </georss:point>
<dc:creator></dc:creator>
<dc:date>2006-02-10 17:33:42.789545+00:00</dc:date>
</item>
<item rdf:about="http://platial.com/post/35102">
<link>http://platial.com/post/35102</link>
<title>24th Amendment Ends Poll Tax</title>
<description>
        <![CDATA[
        1964/01/23. The Twenty-fourth Amendment forbade the use of the poll tax to prevent voting. (http://www.infoplease.com)<br /><br /><a href="http://platial.com/post/35102">Map this on Platial</a><br /> 
        ]]>
        </description>
<georss:point> </georss:point>
<dc:creator></dc:creator>
<dc:date>2006-02-10 17:34:42.917045+00:00</dc:date>
</item>
<item rdf:about="http://platial.com/post/35104">
<link>http://platial.com/post/35104</link>
<title>Civil Rights Murders</title>
<description>
        <![CDATA[
        1964/08. The bodies of three civil-rights workers are found. Murdered by the KKK, James E. Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner had been working to register black voters in Mississippi . (http://www.infoplease.com)<br /><br /><a href="http://platial.com/post/35104">Map this on Platial</a><br /> 
        ]]>
        </description>
<georss:point> </georss:point>
<dc:creator></dc:creator>
<dc:date>2006-02-10 17:36:33.701004+00:00</dc:date>
</item>
<item rdf:about="http://platial.com/post/35105">
<link>http://platial.com/post/35105</link>
<title>Civil Rights Act of 1964</title>
<description>
        <![CDATA[
        1964/06/02. President Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act, the most sweeping civil rights legislation since Reconstruction. It prohibits discrimination of all kinds based on race, color, religion, or national origin. (1964), comprehensive U.S. legislation intended to end discrimination based on race, colour, religion, or national origin; it is often called the most important U.S. law on civil rights since Reconstruction (1865–77). Title I of the act guarantees equal voting rights by removing registration requirements and procedures biased against minorities and the underprivileged. Title II prohibits segregation or discrimination in places of public accommodation involved in interstate commerce. Title VII bans discrimination by trade unions, schools, or employers involved in interstate commerce or doing business with the federal government. The latter section also applies to discrimination on the basis of sex and established a government agency, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), to enforce these provisions. The act also calls for the desegregation of public schools (Title IV), broadens the duties of the Civil Rights Commission (Title V), and assures nondiscrimination in the distribution of funds under federally assisted programs (Title VI). The Civil Rights Act was a highly controversial issue in the United States as soon as it was proposed by President John F. Kennedy in 1963. Although Kennedy was unable to secure passage of the bill in Congress, a stronger version was eventually passed with the urging of his successor, President Lyndon B. Johnson, who signed the bill into law on July 2, 1964, following one of the longest debates in Senate history. White groups opposed to integration with blacks responded to the act with a significant backlash that took the form of protests, increased support for pro-segregation candidates for public office, and some racial violence. The constitutionality of the act was immediately challenged and was upheld by the Supreme Court in the test case Heart of Atlanta Motel v. U.S. (1964). The act gave federal law enforcement agencies the power to prevent racial discrimination in employment, voting, and the use of public facilities. (http://www.britannica.com)<br /><br /><a href="http://platial.com/post/35105">Map this on Platial</a><br /> 
        ]]>
        </description>
<georss:point> </georss:point>
<dc:creator></dc:creator>
<dc:date>2006-02-10 17:37:47.655742+00:00</dc:date>
</item>
<item rdf:about="http://platial.com/post/35108">
<link>http://platial.com/post/35108</link>
<title>Bearden's "Projections"</title>
<description>
        <![CDATA[
        1964. Romare Bearden, considered perhaps the greatest modern African American artist, completes his African American -themed collage series "Projections."
American painter whose collages of photographs and painted paper on canvas depict aspects of American black culture in a style derived from Cubism.

Bearden studied at the Art Students League in New York City with George Grosz (1936–37) and at Columbia University (1943). His early paintings were realistic and often religious in theme. After military service during World War II, he lived in Paris (1950–51), studied at the Sorbonne, and traveled extensively in Europe. During this period he developed his mature, semiabstract collage style. He first achieved recognition in the mid-1940s, and by the 1960s he had come to be regarded as the preeminent collagist in the United States.

The narrative structure of Bearden's paintings is simple and archetypal; ritual, music, and family are his pervasive themes. His works' complexity lies in their poetic abstraction, in which layered fragments of colour and pattern evoke the rhythms, textures, and mysteries of a people's experience. (http://www.pbs.org)<br /><br /><a href="http://platial.com/post/35108">Map this on Platial</a><br /> 
        ]]>
        </description>
<georss:point> </georss:point>
<dc:creator></dc:creator>
<dc:date>2006-02-10 17:42:19.853812+00:00</dc:date>
</item>
<item rdf:about="http://platial.com/post/35109">
<link>http://platial.com/post/35109</link>
<title>Birmingham Riots</title>
<description>
        <![CDATA[
        1963/09/15. Four young black girls attending Sunday school are killed when a bomb explodes at the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, a popular location for civil rights meetings. Riots erupt in Birmingham, leading to the deaths of two more black youths<br /><br /><a href="http://platial.com/post/35109">Map this on Platial</a><br /> 
        ]]>
        </description>
<georss:point> </georss:point>
<dc:creator></dc:creator>
<dc:date>2006-02-10 17:43:23.65125+00:00</dc:date>
</item>
<item rdf:about="http://platial.com/post/35110">
<link>http://platial.com/post/35110</link>
<title>U of Alabama Desegregated</title>
<description>
        <![CDATA[
        1963/06/11. Despite Governor George Wallace physically blocking their way, Vivian Malone and James Hood register for classes at the University of Alabama. governor of Alabama was George Wallace. He had run for and won the office on the slogan of "segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever." In June of 1963, a federal court barred any state government interference with the enrollment of two black students, Vivian Malone and James Hood, at the University of Alabama. Despite this order, Governor George Wallace appointed himself the temporary University registrar and stood in the doorway of the administration building to prevent the students from registering.  In response, President Kennedy federalized the Alabama National Guard. One hundred guardsman escorted the students to campus and their commander, General Henry Graham, ordered George Wallace to "step aside." Thus were the students registered. (http://www.britannica.com)<br /><br /><a href="http://platial.com/post/35110">Map this on Platial</a><br /> 
        ]]>
        </description>
<georss:point> </georss:point>
<dc:creator></dc:creator>
<dc:date>2006-02-10 17:44:25.830376+00:00</dc:date>
</item>
<item rdf:about="http://platial.com/post/34414">
<link>http://platial.com/post/34414</link>
<title>Edgar Ray Killen is Convicted</title>
<description>
        <![CDATA[
        2005/06/21. Edgar Ray Killen, the ringleader of the Mississippi civil rights murders or  James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner (see 1964/08/04), is convicted of manslaughter on the 41st anniversary of the crimes. (http://www.infoplease.com)<br /><br /><a href="http://platial.com/post/34414">Map this on Platial</a><br /> 
        ]]>
        </description>
<georss:point> </georss:point>
<dc:creator></dc:creator>
<dc:date>2006-02-06 19:16:15.867259+00:00</dc:date>
</item>
<item rdf:about="http://platial.com/post/34415">
<link>http://platial.com/post/34415</link>
<title>Barak Obama Elected Senator</title>
<description>
        <![CDATA[
        "2004/11/02. 
Barack Obama becomes the third African American to be elected to the U.S. Senate after Reconstruction. Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) Obama is currently the only African-American US Senator, and only the fifth in US history."<br /><br /><a href="http://platial.com/post/34415">Map this on Platial</a><br /> 
        ]]>
        </description>
<georss:point> </georss:point>
<dc:creator></dc:creator>
<dc:date>2006-02-06 19:17:37.837315+00:00</dc:date>
</item>
<item rdf:about="http://platial.com/post/34416">
<link>http://platial.com/post/34416</link>
<title>Supreme court ruling for Affirmative Action</title>
<description>
        <![CDATA[
        2003/06/23. The Supreme Court issues decisions in two cases, Grutter v. Bollinger and Gratz v. Bollinger, which challenged the use of race in admissions policy at the University of Michigan's Law School and the undergraduate College of Literature, Science and the Arts. The court upholds the concept of race as one of many factors in university admission, but rejects approaches that fail to examine each student's record on an individual basis. (http://www.galegroup.com)<br /><br /><a href="http://platial.com/post/34416">Map this on Platial</a><br /> 
        ]]>
        </description>
<georss:point> </georss:point>
<dc:creator></dc:creator>
<dc:date>2006-02-06 19:19:33.426465+00:00</dc:date>
</item>
<item rdf:about="http://platial.com/post/34419">
<link>http://platial.com/post/34419</link>
<title>Flowers Wins Bobsledding Gold</title>
<description>
        <![CDATA[
        2002/02. Athlete Vonetta Flowers wins a gold medal in the women's bobsled event, becoming the first African American to win at the Winter Olympics. (http://www.britannica.com)<br /><br /><a href="http://platial.com/post/34419">Map this on Platial</a><br /> 
        ]]>
        </description>
<georss:point> </georss:point>
<dc:creator></dc:creator>
<dc:date>2006-02-06 19:30:20.859574+00:00</dc:date>
</item>
<item rdf:about="http://platial.com/post/34424">
<link>http://platial.com/post/34424</link>
<title>MLK Monument Site Chosen</title>
<description>
        <![CDATA[
        1999/12/02. A location for a national monument to Martin Luther King, Jr., on the mall in Washington D.C. between the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument was approved by the National Capital Planning Commission. The architectural design will be determined in an international competition to be completed by November 12, 2003. (http://www.galegroup.com)<br /><br /><a href="http://platial.com/post/34424">Map this on Platial</a><br /> 
        ]]>
        </description>
<georss:point> </georss:point>
<dc:creator></dc:creator>
<dc:date>2006-02-06 19:54:46.393052+00:00</dc:date>
</item>
<item rdf:about="http://platial.com/post/34426">
<link>http://platial.com/post/34426</link>
<title>Tiger Woods Wins the Masters</title>
<description>
        <![CDATA[
        1997/04/13. Tiger Woods becomes the first African American golfer to win the Masters Tournament. 

Tiger Woods enjoyed one of the greatest amateur careers in the history of the game and became a dominant player on the professional circuit in the late 1990s. In 1997 Woods became the first golfer of either African American or Asian descent to win the Masters Tournament, one of the most prestigious events in the sport. With his victory at the 2001 Masters, Woods became the first player to win consecutively the four major tournaments of golf—the Masters, the U.S. Open, the British Open, and the Professional Golfers' Association of America (PGA) Championship.

Woods was the child of an African American father and a Thai mother. A naturally gifted player, he took up golfing at a very young age and soon became a prodigy, taking swings on a television program when he was two years old and shooting a 48 over nine holes at age three. In 1991, at age 15, he became the youngest winner of the U.S. Junior Amateur championship; he also captured the 1992 and 1993 Junior Amateur titles. In 1994 he came from six holes behind to win the first of his three consecutive U.S. Amateur championships. He enrolled at Stanford University in 1994 and won the collegiate title in 1996. After claiming his third U.S. Amateur title, Woods left college and turned professional on August 29, 1996. Playing as a pro in eight PGA events in 1996, he won two titles and was named the PGA Tour's outstanding rookie.

Woods was able to generate such club speed that he routinely hit drives of more than 300 yards. His booming long game, coupled with his expert putting and chipping and his reputation for mental toughness, made him an intimidating opponent and a popular player among fans. At the 1997 Masters Tournament in Augusta, Georgia, Woods shot a tournament record 270 over 72 holes and finished 12 strokes ahead of the rest of the field in one of the most dominating performances in the history of professional golf. In 1999 he became the first golfer in more than two decades to win eight PGA tournaments in a year. His six consecutive victories (1999–2000) tied Ben Hogan's 1948 streak, the second longest in PGA history; Byron Nelson holds the record with 11 straight wins. In June 2000 Woods again made history with his record-breaking win at the U.S. Open. He became the first player to finish the tournament at 12 under par, tying Jack Nicklaus for the lowest 72-hole score (272), and Woods's 15-stroke victory was the largest winning margin at a major championship. On July 23, 2000, Woods became the fifth player in golf history, and the youngest, to complete the career grand slam of the four major championships by winning the British Open. (In 1930, when Bobby Jones won the only calendar-year grand slam, the four major tournaments were the U.S. and British Open and Amateur championships.) Woods's victory by a comfortable 8 strokes was a record-setting 19 strokes under par. He won back-to-back Masters titles in 2001–02. (http://www.britannica.com)<br /><br /><a href="http://platial.com/post/34426">Map this on Platial</a><br /> 
        ]]>
        </description>
<georss:point> </georss:point>
<dc:creator></dc:creator>
<dc:date>2006-02-06 20:04:06.936738+00:00</dc:date>
</item>
<item rdf:about="http://platial.com/post/34434">
<link>http://platial.com/post/34434</link>
<title>Rosewood Survivors Compensated</title>
<description>
        <![CDATA[
        The Florida legislature agrees to compensate survivors of a 1923 incident in which a white mob destroyed the African American town of Rosewood, located on the Gulf Coast. (http://www.pbs.org)<br /><br /><a href="http://platial.com/post/34434">Map this on Platial</a><br /> 
        ]]>
        </description>
<georss:point> </georss:point>
<dc:creator></dc:creator>
<dc:date>2006-02-06 20:29:39.418144+00:00</dc:date>
</item>
<item rdf:about="http://platial.com/post/34436">
<link>http://platial.com/post/34436</link>
<title>Elders named Surgeon General</title>
<description>
        <![CDATA[
        1993/09/07. Joycelyn Elders becomes the first African American woman to serve as the U.S. surgeon general. (http://www.britannica.com)<br /><br /><a href="http://platial.com/post/34436">Map this on Platial</a><br /> 
        ]]>
        </description>
<georss:point> </georss:point>
<dc:creator></dc:creator>
<dc:date>2006-02-06 20:30:45.662887+00:00</dc:date>
</item>
<item rdf:about="http://platial.com/post/34442">
<link>http://platial.com/post/34442</link>
<title>Toni Morrison Wins Nobel Prize</title>
<description>
        <![CDATA[
        1993/10/07. Writer Toni Morrison, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for fiction for Beloved, receives the Nobel Prize for Literature. 

Morrison grew up in the American Midwest in a family that possessed an intense love of and appreciation for black culture. Storytelling, songs, and folktales were a deeply formative part of her childhood. She attended Howard University (B.A., 1953) and Cornell University (M.A., 1955). After teaching at Texas Southern University for two years, she taught at Howard from 1957 to 1964. In 1965 she became a fiction editor. From 1984 she taught writing at the State University of New York at Albany, leaving in 1989 to join the faculty of Princeton University.

Morrison's first book, The Bluest Eye (1970), is a novel of initiation concerning a victimized adolescent black girl who is obsessed by white standards of beauty and longs to have blue eyes. In 1973 a second novel, Sula, was published; it examines (among other issues) the dynamics of friendship and the expectations for conformity within the community. Song of Solomon (1977) is told by a male narrator in search of his identity; its publication brought Morrison to national attention. Tar Baby (1981), set on a Caribbean island, explores conflicts of race, class, and sex. The critically acclaimed Beloved (1987), which won a Pulitzer Prize for fiction, is based on the true story of a runaway slave who, at the point of recapture, kills her infant daughter in order to spare her a life of slavery. Jazz (1992) is a story of violence and passion set in New York City's Harlem during the 1920s. A work of criticism, Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination, also was published in 1992. Her novel Paradise (1998) is a richly detailed portrait of a black utopian community in Oklahoma. Her later novel, Love (2003), is an intricate family story that reveals the myriad facets of love and its ostensible opposite.

The central theme of Morrison's novels is the black American experience; in an unjust society her characters struggle to find themselves and their cultural identity. Her use of fantasy, her sinuous poetic style, and her rich interweaving of the mythic gave her stories great strength and texture. (http://www.britannica.com)
<br /><br /><a href="http://platial.com/post/34442">Map this on Platial</a><br /> 
        ]]>
        </description>
<georss:point> </georss:point>
<dc:creator></dc:creator>
<dc:date>2006-02-06 20:34:08.884019+00:00</dc:date>
</item>
<item rdf:about="http://platial.com/post/34471">
<link>http://platial.com/post/34471</link>
<title>Walcott Wins Nobel Prize</title>
<description>
        <![CDATA[
        1992/10/08. West Indian poet and playwright Derek Walcott receives the Nobel Prize for Literature. Walcott was of mixed black, Dutch, and English descent. He was educated at St. Mary's College in Saint Lucia, and at the University of the West Indies in Jamaica. He began writing poetry at an early age, taught at schools in Saint Lucia and Grenada, and contributed articles and reviews to periodicals in Trinidad and Jamaica. Productions of his plays began in Saint Lucia in 1950, and he studied theatre in New York City in 1958–59. He lived thereafter in Trinidad and the United States, teaching for part of the year at Boston University.

Walcott is best known for his poetry, beginning with In a Green Night: Poems 1948–1960 (1962). This book is typical of his early poetry in its celebration of the Caribbean landscape's natural beauty. The verse in Selected Poems (1964), The Castaway (1965), and The Gulf (1969) is similarly lush in style and incantatory in mood as Walcott expresses his feelings of personal isolation, caught between his European cultural orientation and the black folk cultures of his native Caribbean. Another Life (1973) is a book-length autobiographical poem. In Sea Grapes (1976) and The Star-Apple Kingdom (1979), Walcott uses a tenser, more economical style to examine the deep cultural divisions of language and race in the Caribbean. The Fortunate Traveler (1981) and Midsummer (1984) explore his own situation as a black writer in America who has become increasingly estranged from his Caribbean homeland.

Walcott's Collected Poems, 1948–1984, was published in 1986. In his book-length poem Omeros (1990), he retells the dramas of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey in a 20th-century Caribbean setting. The poems in The Bounty (1997) are mostly devoted to Walcott's Caribbean home and the death of his mother. In 2000 Walcott published Tiepolo's Hound, a poetic biography of Camille Pissarro with autobiographical references and reproductions of Walcott's paintings. (The latter are mostly watercolours of island scenes. Walcott's father had been a visual artist, and the poet began painting early on.)

Of Walcott's approximately 30 plays, the best-known are Dream on Monkey Mountain (produced 1967), a West Indian's quest to claim his identity and his heritage; Ti-Jean and His Brothers (1958), based on a West Indian folktale about brothers who seek to overpower the devil; and Pantomime (1978), an exploration of colonial relationships through the Robinson Crusoe story. The Odyssey: A Stage Version appeared in 1993. Many of Walcott's plays make use of themes from black folk culture in the Caribbean.

The essays in What the Twilight Says (1998) are literary criticism. They examine such subjects as the intersection of literature and politics and the art of translation. (http://www.britannica.com)<br /><br /><a href="http://platial.com/post/34471">Map this on Platial</a><br /> 
        ]]>
        </description>
<georss:point> </georss:point>
<dc:creator></dc:creator>
<dc:date>2006-02-06 20:46:59.657551+00:00</dc:date>
</item>
<item rdf:about="http://platial.com/post/34472">
<link>http://platial.com/post/34472</link>
<title>Rodney King Race Riots</title>
<description>
        <![CDATA[
        1992/04/29. Riots break out in Los Angeles, sparked by the acquittal of four white police officers caught on videotape beating Rodney King, a black motorist. The riots cause at least 55 deaths and $1 billion in damage. (http://www.britannica.com)<br /><br /><a href="http://platial.com/post/34472">Map this on Platial</a><br /> 
        ]]>
        </description>
<georss:point> </georss:point>
<dc:creator></dc:creator>
<dc:date>2006-02-07 16:29:23.994236+00:00</dc:date>
</item>
<item rdf:about="http://platial.com/post/34473">
<link>http://platial.com/post/34473</link>
<title>Hawkins Wins Technology Medal</title>
<description>
        <![CDATA[
        W. Lincoln Hawkins, Ph.D., wins the National Medal of Technology. During his lifetime, he secured over 140 patents. Pioneering investigator of factors limiting the life of plastics, Lincoln Hawkins was co-inventor at Bell Laboratories of an anti-oxidant additive that made possible inexpensive plastic insulation of telephone cables. This new material saved telephone and power companies billions of dollars and made universal telephone service economical, revolutionizing the communications industry.

Hawkins also played an outstanding role in the development of viable means for recycling and reuse of plastics. He was granted 147 patents related to the development of environmentally advanced materials for communications equipment.

Hawkins was the first African American scientist at AT&T Bell Labs and the first African American member of the National Academy of Engineering. He was a passionate advocate and leader in efforts to expand the nation's pool of minority scientific talent. (http://www.pbs.org)<br /><br /><a href="http://platial.com/post/34473">Map this on Platial</a><br /> 
        ]]>
        </description>
<georss:point> </georss:point>
<dc:creator></dc:creator>
<dc:date>2006-02-06 21:53:00.019779+00:00</dc:date>
</item>
<item rdf:about="http://platial.com/post/34475">
<link>http://platial.com/post/34475</link>
<title>Civil Rights Act of 1991</title>
<description>
        <![CDATA[
        1991. President Bush signs the Civil Rights Act of 1991 strengthening existing civil rights laws and providing for damages in cases of intentional employment discrimination. (http://www.classbrain.com)<br /><br /><a href="http://platial.com/post/34475">Map this on Platial</a><br /> 
        ]]>
        </description>
<georss:point> </georss:point>
<dc:creator></dc:creator>
<dc:date>2006-02-06 21:31:21.703452+00:00</dc:date>
</item>
<item rdf:about="http://platial.com/post/34476">
<link>http://platial.com/post/34476</link>
<title>Nelson Mandela Freed</title>
<description>
        <![CDATA[
        1990/02/11. Nelson Mandela, South African Black Nationalist, was freed after 27 years in prison. (http://www.galegroup.com)<br /><br /><a href="http://platial.com/post/34476">Map this on Platial</a><br /> 
        ]]>
        </description>
<georss:point> </georss:point>
<dc:creator></dc:creator>
<dc:date>2006-02-06 21:32:14.575548+00:00</dc:date>
</item>
<item rdf:about="http://platial.com/post/34515">
<link>http://platial.com/post/34515</link>
<title>Puryear Wins Sao Paulo Bienal</title>
<description>
        <![CDATA[
        1989. Sculptor Martin Puryear is the sole artist from the United States chosen for the Sao Paulo Bienal in Brazil and is awarded the exhibition's grand prize. (http://www.pbs.org)<br /><br /><a href="http://platial.com/post/34515">Map this on Platial</a><br /> 
        ]]>
        </description>
<georss:point> </georss:point>
<dc:creator></dc:creator>
<dc:date>2006-02-07 07:43:42.081932+00:00</dc:date>
</item>
<item rdf:about="http://platial.com/post/34518">
<link>http://platial.com/post/34518</link>
<title>Erving Retires</title>
<description>
        <![CDATA[
        1987. Basketball forward Julius Erving, noted for his balletic leaps toward the basket and climactic slam dunks, retires after becoming the third professional player to score a career total of 30,000 points. While playing in high school Erving won an athletic scholarship to the University of Massachusetts. In three seasons there he became one of only seven players ever to average more than 20 points and 20 rebounds per game in a collegiate career. He was still generally unknown, however, when he joined the Virginia Squires of the American Basketball Association (ABA) in 1971. He was traded to the New York Nets two years later. In his five seasons in the ABA, Erving led the league in scoring three times, was the league's Most Valuable Player in its last three years, and led the Nets to championships in 1974 and 1976.

When the ABA merged with the National Basketball Association (NBA), the Nets traded Erving to the Philadelphia 76ers. Erving led the 76ers to the NBA finals four times in seven years, including their 1983 championship win. He was voted the NBA's Most Valuable Player in 1981. In 1980 he was one of 11 players named to the NBA's 35th-anniversary All-Time Team. He retired in 1987 after having become the third professional player to have scored a career total of 30,000 points. At 6 feet 6 inches (1.98 m), Erving played forward and was noted for his fast breaks, balletic leaps toward the basket, and climactic slam dunks. (http://www.britannica.com)<br /><br /><a href="http://platial.com/post/34518">Map this on Platial</a><br /> 
        ]]>
        </description>
<georss:point> </georss:point>
<dc:creator></dc:creator>
<dc:date>2006-02-07 07:48:37.297777+00:00</dc:date>
</item>
<item rdf:about="http://platial.com/post/34522">
<link>http://platial.com/post/34522</link>
<title>Bluford Goes Into Space</title>
<description>
        <![CDATA[
        1983/08/30. Guion (.Guy.) Bluford, Jr., becomes the first African American in space as a member of the crew of the space shuttle Challenger. Bluford received an undergraduate degree in aerospace engineering from Pennsylvania State University in 1964 and was commissioned as an officer in the U.S. Air Force, where he trained as a fighter pilot. He flew 144 combat missions during the Vietnam War. In 1978 he earned a doctorate in aerospace engineering from the Air Force Institute of Technology.

Bluford was one of 35 individuals selected in 1978 from 10,000 applicants in NASA's first competition to become space shuttle astronauts. On August 30, 1983, he rode into Earth orbit on the shuttle orbiter Challenger; he subsequently flew on three additional shuttle missions between 1985 and 1992. Bluford served as a mission specialist on all four flights, with responsibility for a variety of in-orbit tasks, including the deployment of an Indian communications satellite as well as the operation and deployment of scientific and classified military experiments and payloads.

In 1987 Bluford received a graduate degree in business administration from the University of Houston, Clear Lake. He left NASA in July 1993 for a private-sector career in the information technology and engineering services field. (http://www.britannica.com)<br /><br /><a href="http://platial.com/post/34522">Map this on Platial</a><br /> 
        ]]>
        </description>
<georss:point> </georss:point>
<dc:creator></dc:creator>
<dc:date>2006-02-07 07:53:01.535261+00:00</dc:date>
</item>
<item rdf:about="http://platial.com/post/34523">
<link>http://platial.com/post/34523</link>
<title>Jesse Jackson Runs for President</title>
<description>
        <![CDATA[
        1983. Civil-rights leader Jesse Jackson announces his intention to run for the Democratic presidential nomination, becoming the first African American man to make a serious bid for the presidency. Jesse adopted the name of his stepfather, Charles Jackson, at about age 15. A good student in high school, Jesse was elected class president and later attended the University of Illinois (1959–60) on a football scholarship. He then transferred to the predominantly black Agricultural and Technical College of North Carolina in Greensboro and received a B.A. in sociology (1964). He moved to Chicago in 1966, did graduate work at the Chicago Theological Seminary, and was ordained a Baptist minister in 1968.

While an undergraduate, Jackson became involved in the civil rights movement. In 1965 he went to Selma, Alabama, to march with Martin Luther King, Jr., and became a worker in King's Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). Jackson helped found the Chicago branch of Operation Breadbasket, the economic arm of the SCLC, in 1966 and served as the organization's national director from 1967 to 1971. He was in Memphis, Tennessee, with King when the civil rights leader was assassinated on April 4, 1968, though his exact location at the moment King was shot has long been a matter of controversy. Accused of using the SCLC for personal gain, Jackson was suspended by the organization, whereupon he formally resigned in 1971 and founded Operation PUSH (People United to Save Humanity), a Chicago-based organization in which he advocated black self-help and achieved a broad audience for his liberal views. In 1984 he established the National Rainbow Coalition, which sought equal rights for African Americans, women, and homosexuals. These two organizations merged in 1996 to form the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition.

Jackson began traveling widely in the late 1970s to mediate or spotlight international problems and disputes. In 1979 he visited South Africa, where he spoke out against apartheid, and he later journeyed to the strife-ridden Middle East and campaigned to give Palestinians their own state. While some observers and government officials frowned on his diplomatic missions as meddlesome and self-aggrandizing, Jackson nonetheless won praise for negotiating the release of U.S. soldiers and civilians around the world, including in Syria (1984), Iraq (1990), and Yugoslavia (1999).

In the 1980s Jackson became a leading national spokesman and advocate for African Americans. His voter-registration drive was a key factor in the election of Chicago's first African American mayor, Harold Washington, in April 1983. The following year Jackson ran for the Democratic presidential nomination. During the campaign he drew criticism for his relationship with Louis Farrakhan of the Nation of Islam and for making a disparaging remark about New York's Jewish community; Jackson later apologized for his comments and distanced himself from Farrakhan. In the strongest showing ever by an African American candidate, Jackson placed third in the primary voting. In 1988 he staged another bid for the Democratic nomination and came in second to the party's eventual nominee, Michael Dukakis. Jackson's increasing influence within the Democratic Party ensured that African American issues were an important part of the party's platform. Jackson, a dynamic orator, made memorable speeches at later Democratic conventions but declined to run again for the presidency.

In 1989 Jackson took residency in Washington, D.C., and in 1990, when the Washington City Council created two unpaid offices of “statehood senator”—popularly called “shadow senator”—to lobby the U.S. Congress for statehood for the District of Columbia, Jackson won election to one of the posts, his first elective office. In 1997 President Bill Clinton named him a special envoy to Africa, where he traveled to promote human rights and democracy. That year Jackson also founded the Wall Street Project, which sought to increase minority opportunities in corporate America.

At the start of the 21st century, Jackson was embroiled in several controversies. He faced allegations of financial irregularities and questionable fund-raising tactics, and in 2001 it was revealed that he had fathered an out-of-wedlock child, which raised questions about his standing as a moral leader.

Despite the controversies, Jackson has continued his social activism, giving lectures and leading protests. In 2000 he received both the Presidential Medal of Freedom and a Master of Divinity degree from the Chicago Theological Seminary. His books include Straight from the Heart (1987; ed. by Roger D. Hatch and Frank E. Watkins) and Legal Lynching: Racism, Injustice, and the Death Penalty (1995). His son Jesse Jackson, Jr., was elected to the U.S. Congress in 1995. (http://www.britannica.com)<br /><br /><a href="http://platial.com/post/34523">Map this on Platial</a><br /> 
        ]]>
        </description>
<georss:point> </georss:point>
<dc:creator></dc:creator>
<dc:date>2006-02-07 07:56:00.782483+00:00</dc:date>
</item>
<item rdf:about="http://platial.com/post/34525">
<link>http://platial.com/post/34525</link>
<title>Last Racial Classification Law Repealed</title>
<description>
        <![CDATA[
        1983/06/22. The state legislature of Louisiana repealed the last racial classification law in the United States. The criterion for being classified as black was having 1/32nd Negro blood. (http://www.galegroup.com)<br /><br /><a href="http://platial.com/post/34525">Map this on Platial</a><br /> 
        ]]>
        </description>
<georss:point> </georss:point>
<dc:creator></dc:creator>
<dc:date>2006-02-07 07:58:26.7309+00:00</dc:date>
</item>
<item rdf:about="http://platial.com/post/34531">
<link>http://platial.com/post/34531</link>
<title>Young is UN Ambassador</title>
<description>
        <![CDATA[
        1977 Andrew Young becomes the first African American person to serve as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. Young was reared in a middle-class black family, attended segregated Southern schools, and later entered Howard University (Washington, D.C.) as a premed student. But he turned to the ministry and graduated in 1955 from the Hartford Theological Seminary (Hartford, Conn.) with a divinity degree.

A pastor at several black churches in the South, Young became active in the civil-rights movement—especially in voter registration drives. His work brought him in contact with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Young joined with King in leading the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). Following King's assassination in 1968, Young worked with Ralph Abernathy until he resigned from the SCLC in 1970.

Defeated that year in his first bid for a seat in Congress, Young ran again in 1972 and won. He was reelected in 1974 and 1976. In the House he opposed cuts in funds for social programs while trying to block additional funding for the war in Vietnam. He was an early supporter of Jimmy Carter, and, after Carter's victory in the 1976 presidential elections, Andrew Young was made the United States' ambassador to the United Nations. His apparent sympathy with the Third World made him very controversial, and he was finally forced to resign in 1979 after it became known that he had met with a representative of the Palestine Liberation Organization. In 1981 Young was elected mayor of Atlanta, and he was reelected to that post in 1985, serving through 1989. (http://www.pbs.org)<br /><br /><a href="http://platial.com/post/34531">Map this on Platial</a><br /> 
        ]]>
        </description>
<georss:point> </georss:point>
<dc:creator></dc:creator>
<dc:date>2006-02-07 08:05:54.435201+00:00</dc:date>
</item>
<item rdf:about="http://platial.com/post/34535">
<link>http://platial.com/post/34535</link>
<title>Rumble in the Jungle</title>
<description>
        <![CDATA[
        1974/10/30. Boxer George Foreman, previously undefeated in professional bouts, falls to Muhammad Ali in eight rounds at Kinshasa, Zaire.the storied "Rumble in the Jungle." (http://www.britannica.com)<br /><br /><a href="http://platial.com/post/34535">Map this on Platial</a><br /> 
        ]]>
        </description>
<georss:point> </georss:point>
<dc:creator></dc:creator>
<dc:date>2006-02-07 08:20:04.838715+00:00</dc:date>
</item>
<item rdf:about="http://platial.com/post/34868">
<link>http://platial.com/post/34868</link>
<title>Black Enterprise</title>
<description>
        <![CDATA[
        1970. The African American business magazine Black Enterprise begins publication, aimed at the growing African American middle class. (http://www.pbs.org)<br /><br /><a href="http://platial.com/post/34868">Map this on Platial</a><br /> 
        ]]>
        </description>
<georss:point> </georss:point>
<dc:creator></dc:creator>
<dc:date>2006-02-10 10:05:11.120092+00:00</dc:date>
</item>
<item rdf:about="http://platial.com/post/34870">
<link>http://platial.com/post/34870</link>
<title>Martin Luther King, Jr Assassinated</title>
<description>
        <![CDATA[
        1968/04/04 Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee. In the following week riots occurred in at least 125 places throughout the country. (http://www.galegroup.com)<br /><br /><a href="http://platial.com/post/34870">Map this on Platial</a><br /> 
        ]]>
        </description>
<georss:point> </georss:point>
<dc:creator></dc:creator>
<dc:date>2006-02-10 10:08:14.211517+00:00</dc:date>
</item>
<item rdf:about="http://platial.com/post/34884">
<link>http://platial.com/post/34884</link>
<title>Black Power Speech</title>
<description>
        <![CDATA[
        1966/04/19. Stokely Carmichael, chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, calls for "black power" in a speech, ushering in a more militant civil rights stance. CORE endorsed the concept "Black Power." SNCC also adopted it. SCLC did not and the NAACP emphatically did not. (http://www.pbs.org) and ( http://www.galegroup.com)<br /><br /><a href="http://platial.com/post/34884">Map this on Platial</a><br /> 
        ]]>
        </description>
<georss:point> </georss:point>
<dc:creator></dc:creator>
<dc:date>2006-02-10 10:26:08.057311+00:00</dc:date>
</item>
<item rdf:about="http://platial.com/post/34885">
<link>http://platial.com/post/34885</link>
<title>Malcolm X Assassinated</title>
<description>
        <![CDATA[
        1966/02/12. Malcolm X, black nationalist and founder of the Organization of Afro-American Unity, is assassinated. (http://www.infoplease.com)<br /><br /><a href="http://platial.com/post/34885">Map this on Platial</a><br /> 
        ]]>
        </description>
<georss:point> </georss:point>
<dc:creator></dc:creator>
<dc:date>2006-02-10 10:27:05.704711+00:00</dc:date>
</item>
<item rdf:about="http://platial.com/post/35103">
<link>http://platial.com/post/35103</link>
<title>MLK Receives Peace Prize</title>
<description>
        <![CDATA[
        1964/10. Martin Luther King receives the Nobel Peace Prize.  (http://www.infoplease.com)<br /><br /><a href="http://platial.com/post/35103">Map this on Platial</a><br /> 
        ]]>
        </description>
<georss:point> </georss:point>
<dc:creator></dc:creator>
<dc:date>2006-02-10 17:35:48.995584+00:00</dc:date>
</item>
<item rdf:about="http://platial.com/post/35107">
<link>http://platial.com/post/35107</link>
<title>Cassius Clay Champion</title>
<description>
        <![CDATA[
        1964/02/25. Cassius Clay wins the World Heavyweight Boxing Championship. Shortly thereafter, he announces he has joined the Nation of Islam and taken the name Muhammad Ali. (http://www.pbs.org)<br /><br /><a href="http://platial.com/post/35107">Map this on Platial</a><br /> 
        ]]>
        </description>
<georss:point> </georss:point>
<dc:creator></dc:creator>
<dc:date>2006-02-10 17:40:01.594349+00:00</dc:date>
</item>
<item rdf:about="http://platial.com/post/35111">
<link>http://platial.com/post/35111</link>
<title>I Have a Dream</title>
<description>
        <![CDATA[
        1963/08/28. The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom is attended by about 250,000 people, the largest demonstration ever seen in the nation's capital. Martin Luther King delivers his famous "I Have a Dream" speech. The march builds momentum for civil rights legislation.<br /><br /><a href="http://platial.com/post/35111">Map this on Platial</a><br /> 
        ]]>
        </description>
<georss:point> </georss:point>
<dc:creator></dc:creator>
<dc:date>2006-02-10 17:45:41.291704+00:00</dc:date>
</item>
<item rdf:about="http://platial.com/post/35100">
<link>http://platial.com/post/35100</link>
<title>Voting Rights Act</title>
<description>
        <![CDATA[
        1965/08/10. Congress passes the Voting Rights Act of 1965, making it easier for Southern blacks to register to vote. Literacy tests, poll taxes, and other such requirements that were used to restrict black voting are made illegal. (http://www.infoplease.com)<br /><br /><a href="http://platial.com/post/35100">Map this on Platial</a><br /> 
        ]]>
        </description>
<georss:point> </georss:point>
<dc:creator></dc:creator>
<dc:date>2006-02-10 17:30:16.60527+00:00</dc:date>
</item>
<item rdf:about="http://platial.com/post/35106">
<link>http://platial.com/post/35106</link>
<title>A Love Supreme</title>
<description>
        <![CDATA[
         1964. Jazz saxophonist John Coltrane records his masterpiece, A Love Supreme. (http://www.britannica.com)<br /><br /><a href="http://platial.com/post/35106">Map this on Platial</a><br /> 
        ]]>
        </description>
<georss:point> </georss:point>
<dc:creator></dc:creator>
<dc:date>2006-02-10 17:38:47.1329+00:00</dc:date>
</item>
</rdf:RDF>