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| October 1 1940: Dr. Charles Drew named supervisor of the "Plasma for Great Britain" project. |
October 2 1986: President Ronald Reagan appoints Edward J. Perkins ambassador to South Africa. 2000: James Perkins sworn in as Selma, Alabama's, first black mayor. |
October 3 1956: Nat "King" Cole becomes first black performer to host his own TV show. |
October 4 1864: First black daily newspaper, The New Orleans Tribune, founded. |
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| October 5 YOM KIPPUR BEGINS (SUNDOWN) 1872: Booker T. Washington enters Hampton Institute, Virginia. |
October 6 1917: Political activist Fannie Lou Hamer born. |
October 7 1934: Playwright-poet Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones) born. 1993: Toni Morrison becomes the first African American to win the Nobel Prize in literature. |
October 8 1941: Rev. Jesse Jackson born in Greenville, South Carolina. |
October 9 1888: O.B. Clare patents trestle. |
October 10 1899: Isaac R. Johnson patents bicycle frame. |
October 11 1887: Granville T. Woods patents telephone system and apparatus. 1887: Alexander Miles patents elevator. |
| October 12 1904: Physician and scholar W. Montague Cobb born. |
October 13 COLUMBUS DAY OBSERVED 1579: Martin de Porres, first black saint in the Roman Catholic church, born. 1915: Meharry Medical College chartered. |
October 14 1964: At age 35, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. becomes youngest man to win Nobel Peace Prize. |
October 15 1991: Clarence Thomas confirmed as an associate justice of U.S. Supreme Court. 2001: Dr. Ruth Simmons, first African American leader of an Ivy League institution, inaugurated as 18th president of Brown University. |
October 16 1932: Chi Eta Phi Sorority Inc., a national sorority of registered nurses and student nurses, founded by Aliene C. Ewell, RN. 1984: Bishop Desmond Tutu wins Nobel Peace Prize. |
October 17 1888: Capital Savings Bank of Washington, D.C., first bank for blacks, organized. |
October 18 1948: Playwright Ntozake Shange, author of For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When The Rainbow Is Enuf, born. |
| October 19 1943: Paul Robeson opens in Othello at the Shubert Theater in New York City. |
October 20 1898: The first African American-owned insurance company, North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Co., founded. |
October 21 1917: Trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie, pioneer of bebop, born. |
October 22 1953: Clarence S. Green becomes first African American certified in neurological surgery. |
October 23 1947: NAACP petitions United Nations on racial conditions in the U.S. |
October 24 UNITED NATIONS DAY 1980: Judge Patrick Higginbotham finds Republic National guilty in discrimination case. |
October 25 1992: Toronto Blue Jays manager Cito Gaston becomes first African American to manage a team to a World Series title. |
| October 26 DAYLIGHT SAVINGS TIME ENDS 1911: Mahalia Jackson, gospel singer, born. 1994: Beverly Harvard appointed Atlanta, Georgia's, police chief. |
October 27 1954: Benjamin O. Davis Jr. becomes first African American general in U.S. Air Force. |
October 28 1981: Edward M. McIntyre elected first African American mayor of Augusta, Georgia. 1998: President Bill Clinton declares HIV/AIDS a health crisis in racial minority communities. |
October 29 1949: Alonzo G. Moron becomes first African American president of Hampton Institute, Virginia. |
October 30 1979: Richard Arrington elected first African American mayor of Birmingham, Alabama. |
October 31 HALLOWEEN 1896: Actress, singer Ethel Waters born. 1899: William F. Burr patents switching device for railways. |