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March on Washing Movement is proposed
A. Philip Randolph proposes a March on Washington, effectively beginning the March on Washington Movement which was later executed by Martine Luther King Jr. -
The Tuskegee Air Squadron is established by the U.S. Army.
At the time, racial segregation remained the rule in the U.S. armed force. Much of the military establishment believed black soldiers were inferior to whites, and performed relatively poorly in combat. -
The National Negro Opera Company is established
The National Negro Opera Company is established in Pittsburgh by opera singer Mary Lucinda Cardwell Dawson. -
Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor
President Franklin Roosevelt called December 7, 1941, "a date which will live in infamy." On that day, Japanese planes attacked the United States Naval Base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii Territory. The bombing killed more than 2,300 Americans. -
The 1943 Detroit race riot erupts
he race riot was ultimately suppressed by the use of 6,000 federal troops. It occurred in a period of dramatic population increase and social tensions associated with the military buildup of World War II, as Detroit's automotive industry was converted to the war effort. Existing social tensions and housing shortages were exacerbated by the arrival of nearly 400,000 migrants, both African-American and White Southerners, from the Southeastern United States between 1941 and 1943. -
The U.S. Supreme Court declares that white-only political primaries are unconstitutional in the Smith v. Allwright case.
The Court reasoned that the rule restricting primary voters to whites denied Smith equal protection under the law in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment. -
The United Negro College Fund is established
Provided support to historically black colleges and universities and well as its students. -
D-Day
The Allies landed in Normandy on the way to liberate Europe from the Nazis. -
Adolf Hitler escaped an assassination attempt
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Ebony magazine is published
One of the first magazines to cater to African Americans -
Fisk University appoints its first African-American president
Fisk University appoints its first African-American president, sociologist Charles Spurgeon Johnson. That same year, Johnson becomes the first African-American president of the Southern Sociological Society. -
Jackie Robinson becomes the first African-American to play major league baseball
Jackie Robinson made history when he stepped onto the Brooklyn Dodgers' Ebbets Field as the first African American to play in a Major League Baseball game. The controversial decision to put a black man on a major league team prompted a barrage of criticism and initially led to Robinson's mistreatment by fans and fellow players alike -
Assassination of India's Mahatma Gandhi
Mohandas Gandhi was shot dead by a young Hindu radical named Nathuram Godse. The assassin blamed Gandhi for weakening India by insisting on paying reparations to Pakistan. Despite Gandhi's rejection of violence and revenge during his lifetime, Godse and an accomplice were both executed in 1949 for the murder. -
Marshall Plan
The Marshall Plan was an American initiative passed in 1948 to aid Western Europe, in which the United States gave over $12 billion in economic assistance to help rebuild Western European economies after the end of World War II. -
NATO was established
NATO (the North Atlantic Treaty Organization) is an international alliance that consists of 29 member states from North America and Europe. It was established at the signing of the North Atlantic Treaty. -
The Soviet Union developed the atomic bomb
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McLaurin v. Oklahoma State Regents
U.S. Supreme Court rules that a public institution of higher learning could not provide different treatment to a student solely because of his race.
