Today in Black History

Date: Sat, 1969-01-04

This date is the anniversary of the origin of the Congressional Black Caucus in 1969.

It is a group of African-American members of the United States Congress who focus on issues of particular interest to Black Americans. Newly elected African-American representatives of the 77th Congress joined six incumbents to form the "Democratic Select Committee" which began the organization. The committee was renamed the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) in 1971 .
Founding members were Representatives Shirley Chisholm, William Clay, George Collins, John Conyers, Ronald Dellums, Charles Diggs, Augustus Hawkins, Ralph Metcalfe, Parren Mitchell, Robert Nix, Charles Rangel, Louis Stokes, and DC Delegate Walter Fauntroy. Their goals were to positively influence the course of events pertinent to African-Americans and others of similar experience and situation, and to achieve greater equity for persons of African descent in the design and content of domestic and international programs and services. While the CBC has been primarily focused on the concerns of African-Americans, the caucus has also been at the forefront of legislative campaigns of human and civil rights for all citizens.

Date: Sat, 1908-01-04

William Claytor was born on this date in 1908. He was an African-American mathematician and educator.

Born in Norfolk, Virginia, William Waldron Schiefflin Claytor earned his A.B. and M.A. from Howard University. He went on to earn his Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1933. Claytor was a brilliant student. While at Penn, he won a Harrison Scholarship in Mathematics in his second year, and took the most prestigious award offered at Penn at that time, a Harrison Fellowship in Mathematics, in his third and final year of graduate studies. Claytor's dissertation delighted the Penn faculty, for it provided a significant advance in the theory of Peano continua-—a branch of point-set topology. He was the third African American to earn a Ph.D. in mathematics, following Elbert Cox (Ph.D., Cornell, 1925) and Dudley Woodard, Sr. (Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania, 1928).