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Black Quotidian: Everyday History in African-American Newspapers

Philadelphia Tribune - March 22, 1966

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March - Archived Posts
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March 1, 1947: Juanita Jackson Mitchell and Baltimore NAACP protest segregated seating at Ford’s Theater.
March 2, 1956: Tennis champion Althea Gibson trains for French Open and Wimbledon.
March 3, 1985: Atlanta Daily World columnist Dr. Carrie George on the start of National Women’s History Week.
March 4, 1893: Winter Park Advocate on town planning. Guest post by Dr. Julian Chambliss.
March 5, 1969: Bell Plastics’ ads for plastic sofa covers in Los Angeles Sentinel.
March 6, 1915: Chicago Defender on the death of Amanda Smith, founder of the Amanda Smith Industrial School for Colored Girls.
March 7, 1964: Norfolk Journal and Guide reports on “sleeper” antibusing amendment in 1964 Civil Rights Act.
March 8, 1965: Chicago Defender on Selma voting rights movement with reporting from Betty Washington.
March 9, 1957: Pittsburgh Courier celebrates Ghana’s independence with 32-page supplement.
March 10, 1945: Phyllis Daley, Navy’s first African-American nurse, in the New York Amsterdam News.
March 11, 1944: Women’s Army Corps advertisements in Cleveland Call and Post and Chicago Defender.
March 12, 1936: Marian Anderson sets sail for European tour.
March 13, 1954: Cleveland Call and Post on the Connie Morgan, Toni Stone, and Mamie “Peanut” Johnson, the three women who played Negro League baseball.
March 14, 1940: Los Angeles Sentinel on the unsolved murder of Dorothy Lee Gordon.
March 15, 1913: Baltimore Afro-American on the death of Harriet Tubman, “Queen of the Underground.”
March 16, 1991: New York Amsterdam News on International Women’s Day, featuring speaker Rosemari Mealey.
March 17, 1977: Gertrude Gipson profile of Richard Pryor in the Los Angeles Sentinel.
March 18, 1939: New York Amsterdam News on Hattie McDaniel and Gone with the Wind.
March 19, 1910: Ida B. Wells-Barnett letter to the editor of the Chicago Defender.
March 20, 1948: Rosa Lee Ingram case in Pittsburgh Courier.
March 21, 1982: Atlanta Daily World on convictions of Maggie Bozeman and Julia Wilder for voter fraud.
March 22, 1966: High school fencing champions in the Philadelphia Tribune.
March 23, 1957: “Hobo party” covered by Cleveland Call and Post society page, “Women’s Whirl.”
March 24, 1906: Classified ads for clairvoyants, astrologists, and readers in the Baltimore Afro-American.
March 25, 1939: Federal Housing Authority (FHA) discrimination in the New York Amsterdam News, Chicago Defender, and Los Angeles Sentinel and the black press. Guest post by Michael Glass, PhD student.
March 25, 1944: Amy Ashwood Garvey in the New York Amsterdam News. Guest post by Dr. Keisha N. Blain.
March 26, 1955: Claudette Colvin’s arrest reported in the Chicago Defender.
March 27, 1971: South Carolina civil rights activist Victoria DeLee runs for Congress.
March 28, 1946: Los Angeles Sentinel reports on employment breakthrough for black workers in auto production.
March 29, 1930: Tuskegee Institute women’s track team in Norfolk Journal and Guide.
March 30, 1942: Pianist Hazel Scott and Broadway’s “Priorities of 1942” in the Atlanta Daily World.
March 31, 1934: Philadelphia Tribune women’s basketball team in the Norfolk Journal and Guide.
March 22, 1966 On March 22, 1966, the Philadelphia Tribune noted the success of the fencing team at Ben Franklin High School. The high school is located north of Center City Philadelphia, and in the 1960s the school’s enrollment was 95 percent African American and 5 percent Puerto Rican. I researched Ben Franklin High School for my first book, but I had no idea that the school fielded a successful fencing team or that Philadelphia had a public school fencing league. This brief news item features a picture of Ken Presley, who won the Public League Epee championship. Ben Franklin High was an all-boys school (neighboring William Penn High School, was an all-girls public school), and Franklin's sports team nickname was the Poor Richards.

After finding this article, I wanted to learn more about the history of black fencers. One of the people I learned about is Ruth White, who as a high school student in 1969, was the first African American to win a national championship. White went on to compete in the 1972 Olympics and was inducted into the U.S. Fencing Hall of Fame.