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This Week in Black History
1970—Four people, including the presiding judge, were killed during a courthouse shootout in Marin County, Calif. A group of Blacks, led by 17-year-old Jonathan Jackson, stage an assault on the courthouse in a bid to free Jackson’s brother—famed Soledad Brother and militant activist George Jackson. Jonathan was among those who died. Professor and communist Angela Davis was charged with providing the guns for the bloody escape attempt but she would later be found not guilty.
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This Week in Black History
1874—Father Patrick Francis Healy became the first Black president of a major White university when he was inaugurated on this day as president of Georgetown University. Healy was also the first African-American to earn a Ph.D. However, racial prejudice forced him to earn his degree in Europe not the United States. Healy was born in Macon, Ga., in 1834 to a Black slave woman and a White plantation owner who decided to acknowledge his five biracial children. They were all sent north to be educated. Although some felt he could have passed for White, Healy openly acknowledged his African ancestry. He died in 1910.
