“Won’t it be wonderful when Black history and Native American history and Jewish history
 and all of U.S. history is taught from one book. Just U.S. history.” 
– Maya Angelou

February 11

• Nelson Mandela, leader of movement for democracy in South Africa, released from prison after 27 years, 1990
• Clifford Alexander, Jr. first Black US Secretary of State, confirmed 1977
• Robert Weaver sworn in as administrator of the Housing and Home Finance Agency, highest federal post to date by a Black American, 1961

February 12

• First Lt. Nancy C. Leftneant became the first Black person accepted in the regular Army Nursing Corps, 1948
• NAACP founded after riot in Springfield, IL, 1909
• Henry Highland Garnet, first Black person to speak in the Capitol, delivered memorial sermon on the abolition of slavery in the House of Representatives, 1865

February 13

• The New York Stock Exchange admits its first Black member, Joseph Searles, 1970
• Southern Christian Leadership Conference organized at New Orleans meeting with Martin Luther King Jr. as president, 1957
• First Black pro Basketball team, “The Renaissance,” organized 1923

February 14

• National Negro Congress organized at Chicago meeting attended by 817 delegates representing more than 500 organizations, 1936
• Morehouse College organized in Augusta, Ga. The institution was later moved to Atlanta, 1867
• New registration law in Tennessee abolished racial distinctions in voting, 1867
• Frederick Douglass, "The Great Emancipator," is born, 1817

February 15

• Henry Lewis becomes the first Black person to lead a symphony orchestra in the United States, 1968
• Black abolitionists invaded a Boston courtroom and rescued a fugitive slave, 1851
• Sarah Roberts barred from white school in Boston. Her father, Benjamin Roberts, filed the first school integration suit on her behalf, 1848

February 16

• New York City Council passes a bill prohibiting racial discrimination in city-assisted housing developments, 1951
• Bessie Smith makes her first recording, "Down Hearted Blues," which sells 800,000 copies for Columbia Records, 1923
• Frederick Douglass elected President of Freeman Bank and Trust, 1857

February 17

• Virginia House of Delegates votes unanimously to retire the state song, "Carry Me Back to Old Virginia," a tune that glorifies slavery, 1997
• Michael Jeffrey Jordan, famed basketball player and former minor league baseball player, born in New York, N.Y, 1963
• Congress passed resolution readmitting Mississippi on condition that it would never change its constitution to disenfranchise Black citizens, 1870