June 24, 1896 – Booker T. Washington became the first African American to receive an honorary MA degree from Howard University.

Kris Snibbe
Harvard Staff Photographer

For example, on June 24, 1896, educator Booker T. Washington became the first African American to receive an honorary degree from Harvard University.
That evening, during an alumni dinner, Washington said: “In working out our destiny, while the main burden and center of activity must be with us, we shall need, in a large measure in the years that are to come, as we have in the past, the help, the encouragement, the guidance that the strong can give the weak. Thus helped, we of both races in the South soon shall throw off the shackles of racial and sectional prejudice and rise, as Harvard University has risen and as we all should rise, above the clouds of ignorance, narrowness and selfishness, into that atmosphere, that pure sunshine, where it will be our highest ambition to serve MAN, our brother, regardless of race or previous condition.”

Speech cited from Booker T. Washington’s Address at the Alumni Dinner of Harvard University.

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1314 – Scottish forces led by Robert the Bruce won over Edward II of England at the Battle of Bannockburn in Scotland.

1340 – The English fleet defeated the French fleet at Sluys, off the Flemish coast.

1497 – Italian explorer John Cabot, sailing in the service of England, landed in North America on what is now Newfoundland.

1509 – Henry VIII was crowned King of England.

1664 – New Jersey, named after the Isle of Jersey, was founded.

1675 – King Philip’s War began when Indians massacre colonists at Swansee, Plymouth colony.

1717 – The Freemasons were founded in London.

1793 – The first republican constitution in France was adopted.

1812 – Napoleon crossed the Nieman River and invaded Russia.

1844 – Charles Goodyear was granted U.S. patent #3,633 for vulcanized rubber.

1859 – At the Battle of Solferino, also known as the Battle of the Three Sovereigns, the French army led by Napoleon III defeated the Austrian army under Franz Joseph I in northern Italy.

1861 – Federal gunboats attacked Confederate batteries at Mathias Point, Virginia.

1862 – U.S. intervention saved the British and French at the Dagu forts in China.

1869 – Mary Ellen “Mammy” Pleasant officially became the Vodoo Queen in San Francisco, CA.

1896 – Booker T. Washington became the first African American to receive an honorary MA degree from Howard University.

1910 – The Japanese army invaded Korea.

1913 – Greece and Serbia annulled their alliance with Bulgaria following border disputes over Macedonia and Thrace.

1922 – The American Professional Football Association took the name of The National Football League.

1931 – The Soviet Union and Afghanistan signed a treaty of neutrality.

1940 – France signed an armistice with Italy.

1940 – TV cameras were used for the first time in a political convention as the Republicans convened in Philadelphia, PA.

1941 – U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt pledged all possible support to the Soviet Union.

1947 – Kenneth Arnold reported seeing flying saucers over Mt. Rainier, Washington.

1948 – The Soviet Union began the Berlin Blockade.

1955 – Soviet MIG’s down a U.S. Navy patrol plane over the Bering Strait.

1962 – The New York Yankees beat the Detroit Tigers, 9-7, after 22 innings.

1964 – The Federal Trade Commission announced that starting in 1965, cigarette manufactures would be required to include warnings on their packaging about the harmful effects of smoking.

1968 – “Resurrection City,” a shantytown constructed as part of the Poor People’s March on Washington D.C., was closed down by authorities.

1970 – The U.S. Senate voted overwhelmingly to repeal the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution.

1971 – The National Basketball Association modified its four-year eligibility rule to allow for collegiate hardship cases.

1982 – The U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that no president could be sued for damages connected with actions taken while serving as President of the United States.

1985 – Natalia Solzhenitsyn the wife of exiled, Soviet author Alexander Solzhenitsyn, became a U.S. citizen.

1986 – The Empire State Building was designated a National Historic Landmark.

1997 – The U.S. Air Force released a report titled “The Roswell Report, Case Closed” that dismissed the claims that an alien spacecraft had crashed in Roswell, NM, in 1947.

1998 – AT&T Corp. struck a deal to buy cable TV giant Tele-Communications Inc. for $31.7 billion.

1998 – Walt Disney World Resort admitted its 600-millionth guest.
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2002 – The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that juries, not judges, must make the decision to give a convicted killer the death penalty.

R.A.V. v. City of St. Paul, 505 U.S. 377 (1992), is a case of the United States Supreme Court that unanimously struck down St. Paul ‘s Bias-Motivated Crime Ordinance and reversed the conviction of a teenager, referred to in court documents only as R.A.V., for burning a cross on the lawn of an African-American family since the ordinance was held to violate the First Amendment ‘s protection of freedom of speech.

Concurrence: White, joined by Blackmun, O’Connor, Stevens (in part)

Full case name: R.A.V., Petitioner v. City of St. Paul, Minnesota

Majority: Scalia, joined by Rehnquist, Kennedy, Souter, Thomas

Prior: Statute upheld as constitutional and charges reinstated, 464 N.W.2d 507 (Minn. 1991)