February 1, 1902 - Playwright, poet, author Langston Hughes born

February 2, 1807 - Congress bans foreign slave trade.

February 3, 1956 - Autherine Lucy enrolls as the first African American student at the University of Alabama.

February 4, 1913 - Rosa Parks, civil rights pioneer who sparked Montgomery bus boycott, born.

February 5, 1934 - Major league home run champion Hank Aaron born.

February 6, 1867 - Robert Tanner Jackson becomes first African American to receive a degree in dentistry.

February 7, 1883 - Ragtime pianist and composer Hubie Blake born.

February 8, 1968 - Three South Carolina State students killed during segregation protest in Orangeburg, S.C.

February 9, 1964 - Arthur Ashe, Jr. becomes first African American on U.S. Davis Cup team.

February 10, 1989 - Ronald H. Brown is elected chairman of the Democratic National Committee.

February 11, 1990 - Nelson Mandela is released from prison after 27 years.

February 12, 1909 - NAACP founded in New York City.

February 13, 1970 - Joseph L. Searles becomes first Black member of the New York Stock Exchange.

February 14, 1879 - B.K. Bruce of Mississippi becomes first African American to preside over U.S. Senate.

February 15, 1961 - U.N. sessions are disrupted by U.S. and African nationalists over assassination of Congo Premier Patrice Lumumba.

February 16, 1874 - Frederick Douglass elected president of Freedman's Bank and Trust.

February 17, 1902 - Marion Anderson, internationally acclaimed opera star, born.

February 18, 1931 - Toni Morrison, winner of 1988 Pulitzer Prize for fiction, born.

February 19, 1923 - In Moore vs. Dempsey decision, U.S. Supreme Court guarantee due process of law to Blacks in state courts.

February 20, 1934 - Four Saints in Three Acts, by Virgil Thompson and Gertrude Stein, premieres as the first Black-performed opera on Broadway.

February 21, 1965 - Malcolm X is assassinated in New York.

February 22, 1989 - Col. Frederick Gregory was the first African American to command a space shuttle mission.

February 23, 1868 - W.E.B. Dubois, scholar, activist and author of the Souls of Black Folk, born.

February 24, 1922 - The home of Frederick Douglass made a national shrine.

February 25, 1853 - First Black YMCA organized in Washington, D.C.

February 26, 1965 - Civil rights activist Jimmie Lee Jackson died after being shot by state police in Marion, Ala.

February 27, 1988 - Debi Thomas becomes first Black to win an Olympic medal in figure skating.

February 28, 1984 - Michael Jackson wins eight Grammy awards.

February 29, 1892 - Sculptor Augusta Savage was born.