A daily calendar of remembrance.
The consequential dates of Black American history — assassinations and breakthroughs, the days of marches and massacres, the births and deaths of the people who built the country. Sourced, contextualized, published in one place every day.
On This Day is in active development. Daily entries — one for every date on the calendar — will be published on a rolling basis as the editorial schedule fills in. Subscribe to receive each day's entry by email.
What “On This Day” will be
Every entry will follow the same structure: the date, the event, what it actually meant at the time, what it means now, the primary source, and a citation. Editorial standards are identical to the rest of Black-History.com — fact-checked by two reviewers, sourced to documented records. Below are example entries to show the shape of the work.
“I Have a Dream”
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivers the closing address from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial to a crowd of more than 250,000 at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. The march was organized principally by A. Philip Randolph and Bayard Rustin.
The Assassination of Dr. King
Martin Luther King Jr. is killed by a single rifle shot on the balcony of Room 306 at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis at 6:01 p.m. He had come to Memphis to support striking sanitation workers of AFSCME Local 1733.
Juneteenth
U.S. Army Major General Gordon Granger issues General Order No. 3 in Galveston, Texas, informing the people of Texas that “all slaves are free.” The order arrives two and a half years after the Emancipation Proclamation.
Bloody Sunday at the Edmund Pettus Bridge
Alabama State Troopers and a mounted posse attack 600 peaceful marchers led by John Lewis and Hosea Williams at the eastern apex of the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma. The footage transforms the politics of voting rights.
Brown v. Board of Education
The U.S. Supreme Court rules unanimously that “separate educational facilities are inherently unequal,” overturning Plessy v. Ferguson. Lead counsel: Thurgood Marshall and the NAACP Legal Defense Fund.
The Assassination of Malcolm X
Malcolm X is shot and killed while delivering an address at the Audubon Ballroom in Harlem. He was 39. The full circumstances of the killing remain the subject of ongoing legal review and historical revision.
If a date is significant to your family history, your institution's history, or a story you have sourced from the primary record, write us at editors@black-history.com. We accept submissions for review — every entry that goes live carries a documented source and a credit line.