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DeRay McKesson (July 9, 1985) has emerged as a key 21st-century civil rights activist and educator. His documentation of the protests in Ferguson, Missouri, following the unjust murder of Michael Brown solidified his role as a leader in the national Black Lives Matter movement.

He was born in West Baltimore. His father, Calvin McKesson, and great-grandmother raised him and his sister. He was a community organizer and the Chairman of Youth As Resources. He served as president of his class and was active in student government. He graduated from Bowdoin College with a BA in Government and Legal Studies. Teach For America gave him his start as an elementary school educator in Brooklyn.

He traveled to Ferguson to join the protests following the murder of Michael Brown by local police officers. He had spent all of his days off with people from Ferguson and other suburbs demanding justice. Utilizing his social media accounts, he provided insightful live reports of the unrest. The nation relied on his real-time updates for news regarding the protests. He co-launched “Mapping Police Violence”.

He spoke at the GLAAD Gala about his life experiences as a gay African American man and urged LGBTQ+ individuals to “come out of the quiet” to embrace their identities fully. He announced his candidacy for the Baltimore mayoral election (2016). He finished sixth in the Democratic Party primary.

After the shooting of Alton Sterling, he went to the city and was arrested during a protest while live-streaming the event. Charges against him were dropped, and he and other activists met with President Barack Obama to discuss friction between African American communities and police officers.

Toni Townes-Whitley is a global technology leader who is the third Black female Fortune 500CEO, and the first to lead a defense industry corporation. She is the CEO of Science Applications International Corporation. Before joining SAIC, she served as a group president at Microsoft and managed $16 billion in revenue.

She (née McCall) was born in Fort Benning, Georgia, and raised in Virginia. Her father is LTG (Ret.) James F. “Cash” McCall, who was the first Black Comptroller of the US Army. Her mother is S. Yvonne McCall, a former Fairfax County elementary school principal. She was raised with her brother.

In 1985, she earned her BA in Public Policy and economics from Princeton School of Public and International Affairs. Her undergraduate thesis was titled “Princeton University Admissions Policy: The Question of Diversity.”

She has attended and received certifications from Wharton Executive Education, New York University, and the Performance Management Institute.

She is married to John H. Whitley, and the couple has five children and nine grandchildren. Her first marriage to Townes produced two children and ended in divorce.

Debra “Debbie” Edwaina Sledge (July 9, 1954) is a singer and a member of the group Sister Sledge. Sister Sledge is a musical vocal group formed in 1971. The group consists of sisters Debbie, Joni, Kim, and Kathy Sled. The siblings achieved international success at the height of the disco era. The year 1979 will see the release of their breakthrough album, “We Are Family,” which will peak at number three on the US Album Chart and include the 1979 US top ten singles “He’s the Greatest Dancer” and “We Are Family”. A third single, “Lost in Music”, will reach the US top forty. “We Are Family” will earn a Grammy Award nomination for Best R&B Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocals. Their other US singles will include a remake of Mary Wells’ hit “My Guy”, “Mama Never Told Me”, and “Thinking of You”, before reaching #1 on the UK Singles Chart with the song “Frankie”.

Gwendolyn Guthrie (July 9, 1950 – February 3, 1999) was a singer-songwriter and pianist who sang backing vocals for Aretha Franklin, Billy Joel, Stevie Wonder, Peter Tosh, The Limit, and Madonna, among others, and who wrote songs made famous by Ben E. King, Angela Bofill, and Roberta Flack. She is known for her 1986 anthem “Ain’t Nothin’ Goin’ On but the Rent,” and for her 1986 cover of the song “(They Long to Be) Close to You.”

She was born and raised in Newark, New Jersey. She joined vocal groups such as the Ebonettes and the Matchmakers while working as an elementary school teacher.

She began moonlighting as a singer of commercial jingles. A songwriting partnership with boyfriend, trombonist/bassist Haras Fyre resulted in comeback single “Supernatural Thing,” an R&B #1 (#5 pop) hit in 1975, and the follow-up, “Do It In the Name of Love (#4 R&B). They wrote “This Time I’ll Be Sweeter” for Angela Bofill. Together they wrote seven tracks on Sister Sledge’s Circle of Love. “Cross My Heart”, “Protect Our Love”, “Love Don’t You Go Through No Changes on Me”, “Don’t You Miss Him Now”, “Pain Reliever”, “You’re Much Better Off Loving Me”, and “Fireman”. She wrote Roberta Flack’s “God Don’t Like Ugly”.

She sang a duet of “Nothing But Love” with Peter Tosh on his album Wanted Dread and Alive.

She began racking up dance hits. She was dubbed “The First Lady of the Paradise Garage,” as several of her songs became anthems at that venue. She recorded her first major landmark hit, “Padlock”. She was featured on the club hit Say Yeah with the group The Limit. The track reached number 17 in the UK singles chart. She was the executive producer and singer on the minor hit “Naughty Times”.

“Can’t Love You Tonight” addressed AIDS at a time when the disease was a rather taboo subject. She was an ally of the gay community and people with AIDS.

Dr. Michael Vincent Drake (July 9, 1950) is a physician. He served as the 21st president of the University of California (2020-2025). He was the 15th president of Ohio State University (2014-20). He was the chancellor of the University of California, Irvine (2005-14), and before that served as vice president for health affairs for the University of California system.

He was born in New York City and raised in Englewood, New Jersey, and Sacramento. He is the son of a doctor and a social worker. His mother graduated from East High School in Youngstown before attending college in Baltimore. The family lived in Baltimore, Nashville, Tennessee, New York, and New Jersey before settling in Northern California. During college summers, he worked at the original Tower Records.

He graduated from C.K. McClatchy High School and attended Stanford University. He received his MD from UC San Francisco and holds three honorary degrees.

He spent more than two decades on the faculty of the UCSF School of Medicine, ultimately becoming the Steven P. Shearing Professor of Ophthalmology and senior associate dean. He then served for five years as vice president of health affairs for the University of California system. From July 2005 to June 2014, he served as chancellor of the University of California, Irvine. He served as a Professor of Ophthalmology (School of Medicine) and Education (School of Education).

In 2017, he led the establishment of the Ohio State Tuition Guarantee, which freezes tuition, mandatory fees, housing, and dining for four years for incoming, in-state first-year students. In 2018, he increased the value of Ohio State Land Grant Opportunity Scholarships to cover the full cost of attendance and doubled the program’s size.

Orenthal James Simpson (July 9, 1947 - April 11, 2024) nicknamed “the Juice”, was a former football running back, broadcaster, actor, and advertising spokesman. Once a popular figure, he is known for being tried for the murders of his former wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend, Ron Goldman. He was acquitted of the murders in criminal court but was found responsible for both deaths in a civil trial.

He was born and raised in San Francisco. He was the son of Eunice (née Durden) and Jimmy Lee Simpson.

He attended USC, where he played football and won the Heisman Trophy in 1968. He played professionally as a running back in the NFL for 11 seasons, primarily with the Buffalo Bills (1969-77). He played for the San Francisco 49ers (1978-79). In 1973, he became the first NFL player to rush for more than 2,000 yards in a season. He holds the record for the single-season yards-per-game average, which stands at 143.1. He was the only player to ever rush for over 2,000 yards in the 14-game regular-season NFL format. He was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame and the Pro Football Hall of Fame. He began new careers in acting and football broadcasting.

Richard Arnold Roundtree (July 9, 1941 - October 24, 2023) was an actor known for creating the onscreen persona of John Shaft, the first and perhaps most iconic Black action hero of the 1970s. Following success as a model, he was cast in films at an early age and has since maintained a steady career playing character roles in movies and television. But it is Shaft, the cool, suave detective who helped usher in the Blaxploitation Era (1971-75) with which he has remained most prominently associated throughout his career, playing the role in five films and a TV series.

He was born in New Rochelle, New York to John and Kathryn Roundtree. After graduating from New Rochelle High School, where he played for the school’s championship football team, he attended Southern Illinois University for two years, then left to start a professional career as a model with the Ebony Fashion Fair.

He studied acting and was among the Black actors whom Hollywood summoned following the surprise success of Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song. His first film role was Shaft. Shaft continued the trend toward films that centered African American heroes and heroines in action.

He inhabited the role with striking success and, virtually overnight, became a major screen presence, receiving a Golden Globe Award nomination for New Star of the Year.

The film’s success led to two quick sequels. Shaft’s Big Score was another mammoth hit, but Shaft in Africa failed to recoup its cost, and A TV series with him. His film career would be primarily in supporting roles, notably in Roots, Inchon, Se7en, and others.

June Millicent Jordan (July 9, 1936 – June 14, 2002) was a poet, essayist, teacher, and activist. In her writing, she explored issues of gender, race, immigration, and representation.

She was passionate about using Black English in her writing and poetry, teaching others to treat it as its own language and an important outlet for expressing African American culture.

She was inducted into the National LGBTQ Wall of Honor within the Stonewall National Monument.

Her first published book, Who Look at Me (1969), was a collection of poems for children. It was followed by 27 books in her lifetime and one (Some of Us Did Not Die: Collected and New Essays), which was in press when she died. Two more have been published posthumously: Directed By Desire: The Collected Poems of June Jordan (Copper Canyon Press, 2005), and the 1970 poetry collection SoulScript, edited by Jordan, has been reissued.

She was an essayist, columnist for The Progressive, novelist, biographer, and librettist for the musical/opera I Was Looking at the Ceiling, and Then I Saw the Sky, composed by John Adams and produced by Peter Sellars.

Shy began her teaching career at the City College of New York. She taught at Yale University, Sarah Lawrence College, and Connecticut College. She became the director of The Poetry Center at SUNY at Stony Brook and was an English professor. She was a full professor in the departments of English, Women’s Studies, and African American Studies at UC Berkeley.

She was known as “the Poet of the People”. At Berkeley, she founded the “Poetry for the People” program. It aimed to inspire and empower students to use poetry as a means of artistic expression.

Attorney Belford Vance Lawson Jr. (July 9, 1901 - February 23, 1985) was the first African American attorney to win a Supreme Court case. He was born in Roanoke, Virginia. He attended the University of Michigan. He played for the university football team and was only the school’s second-ever African American varsity player. In 1922, he was initiated into the Epsilon chapter of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity and earned his BA.

His career took him to Jackson College, where he taught social science and directed the Teachers’ Professional Department. He coached the school’s football team and served as its athletic director. He taught at Morris Brown College.

He attended classes at Yale Law School for two years. After working at the Supreme Liberty Life Insurance Company, he enrolled in Howard Law School. He was admitted to the DC Bar. He opened a law firm with the help of his Alpha Phi Alpha brother, Cincinnati lawyer Theodore Moody Berry.

He founded the New Negro Alliance along with John A. Davis Sr and M. Franklin Thorne. He confronted White-owned businesses in Black neighborhoods that refused to hire Blacks. Don’t Buy Where You Can’t Work was the name of the NNA campaign. White businesses retaliated with a lawsuit. In New Negro Alliance v. Sanitary Grocery Co., the SCOTUS upheld the NNA’s right to boycott employers.

He was instrumental in securing Thurgood Marshall's agreement to file Murray v. Maryland, which challenged segregation at the University of Maryland School of Law. He was a member of the legal team that won the 1950 Southern Railway Company v. Henderson case. Segregation in railroad dining cars was abolished. He was elected President of the YMCA of the USA.

Jester Joseph Hairston (July 9, 1901 – January 18, 2000) was a composer, songwriter, arranger, choral conductor, and actor. He was regarded as a leading expert on Negro spirituals and choral music. His notable compositions include “Amen,” a gospel-tinged theme from the film Lilies of the Field, a hit for The Impressions, and the Christmas song “Mary’s Boy Child”.

While growing up, he heard his grandmother and her friends talking and singing about life on the plantations of the South. He listened with immense interest and promised himself he would preserve this history through music.

He majored in Landscape Architecture at Massachusetts Agricultural College. While studying landscape architecture, he became involved in various church choirs and choral groups. The accompanist of one, Anna Laura Kidder, saw his potential in music and became his benefactor. Mrs. Kidder offered him financial assistance to study music at Tufts University, from which he graduated. He was one of the first African American students admitted to Tufts. He studied music at the Juilliard School.

The Fourteenth Amendment (Amendment XIV) to the US Constitution was adopted on July 9, 1868, as one of the Reconstruction Amendments. Arguably, one of the most consequential amendments to date addresses citizenship rights and equal protection under the law. It was proposed in response to issues related to formerly enslaved people following the American Civil War. The amendment was bitterly contested, particularly by the states of the defeated Confederacy, which were forced to ratify it to regain representation in Congress. The amendment, particularly its first section, is one of the most litigated parts of the Constitution, forming the basis for landmark decisions such as Brown v. Board of Education regarding racial segregation, Roe v. Wade regarding abortion, Bush v. Gore regarding the 2000 presidential election, and Obergefell v. Hodges regarding same-sex marriage. The amendment limits the actions of all state and local officials, including those acting on their behalf.

The amendment’s first section includes several clauses: the Citizenship Clause, Privileges or Immunities Clause, Due Process Clause, and Equal Protection Clause. The Citizenship Clause provides a broad definition of citizenship, nullifying the SCOTUS decision in Dred Scott v. Sandford, which held that Americans descended from enslaved Africans could not be citizens of the US. Since the Slaughterhouse Cases, the Privileges or Immunities Clause has been interpreted to do very little.

“Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship. Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.” Romans‬ ‭12:1-2‬ ‭NIV‬‬

“You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires;”

‭‭Ephesians‬ ‭4:22‬ ‭NIV‬‬

A little-known Black history fact about folding chairs:

Nathaniel Alexander, of Lynchburg, Virginia, received the patent on July 7, 1911.

He is by far the most popular among folding-chair inventors. And for a good reason. The Nathaniel Alexander folding chair uses Cram’s design as a template for a superior version. This version is more convenient and valuable. In his patent, he states that his creation will be used in churches and other auditoriums. His design includes a thinner chair with arms and a noticeable backrest. This backrest functions as a desk or shelf for the person behind it. The Nathaniel Alexander folding chair has features that are suitable for churches. It is very practical for the choir and congregation to rest their music sheets and prayer books.

Application US61351411A events

1911-03-10

Application filed by Nathaniel Alexander

1911-03-10

Priority to US61351411A

1911-07-04

Application granted

1911-07-04

Publication of US997108A

1928-07-04

Jaden Christopher Syre Smith (July 8, 1998) known mononymously as Jaden, is a rapper, singer, songwriter, and actor. He is the son of Jada Pinkett Smith and Will Smith. His first movie role was with his father in the film The Pursuit of Happyness. He acted in the remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still, the 2010 remake of The Karate Kid, and the film After Earth with his father.

Following the critical panning of After Earth, he distanced himself from acting and the film industry, deciding to focus on music instead. He released CTV2, his second mixtape. Following a three-year work effort, he released his debut studio album, Syre, on November 17, 2017. His second studio album, Erys, was released on July 5, 2019.

Lance Darnell Gross (July 8, 1981) is an actor, model, and photographer. He is known for his role as Calvin Payne on the sitcom Tyler Perry’s House of Payne and the sitcom Tyler Perry’s The Paynes, as well as appearing in other Tyler Perry productions such as Meet the Browns and Tyler Perry’s Temptations: Confessions of a Marriage Counselor. He co-starred in Our Family Wedding. He starred as Secret Service Agent Marcus Finley in Crisis. He starred as Tyrique Freeman in Our Kind of People.

He was born in Oakland, the child of an African American mother and a Ghanaian immigrant father, and later moved to Las Vegas, where he attended and graduated from Bonanza High School. He went on to attend Howard University, where he received a BA in theater. He trained at The Ivanna Chubbuck Studio and the Tasha Smith Acting Studio.

Jamal “Gravy” Woolard (July 8, 1975) is an actor and rapper. He portrayed rapper The Notorious B.I.G. in Notorious and reprised the role as a supporting character in All Eyez on Me.

He is from Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, and Lafayette Gardens, Brooklyn. He joined the group Da Franchise, which consisted of Red Café and Q Da Kid, and was signed by Violator Records. The group released the 2000 single “We Gotta Eat”. In real life, he raps under the name “Gravy”. He is featured in the song “Untouchable” by Tupac Shakur on Pac’s Life album. He had to add over 50 pounds to his frame to play The Notorious B.I.G. in Notorious.

He was known for being shot near the radio station Hot 97 on April 26, 2006, and giving an interview on the Funkmaster Flex show directly afterward. His music was banned from play at the station as a result of a policy that bans “music by any artist who is involved in an altercation at the station.”

Jason L. Riley (July 8, 1971) is a senior fellow at the conservative Manhattan Institute, a columnist, and member of the editorial board at The Wall Street Journal, a Fox News commentator, and a frequent contributor to National Review. He authored two very popular books on politics and race. Let Them In: The Case for Open Borders.

His second book, Please Stop Helping Us: How Liberals Make It Harder for Blacks to Succeed, examined social welfare policies and programs designed to promote Black advancement.

He was born in Buffalo, New York, where he earned a BA in English from SUNY Buffalo. His father, Lee Riley, was a social worker, and his mother, Ola Riley, was a public school teacher’s aide. Before joining the Wall Street Journal as a copyreader in 1994, he worked for the Buffalo News and USA Today. In 2005, he joined the Wall Street Journal editorial board, where he wrote editorials focusing on the impact of public policy on the African American community.