On this day in Black History: February 4

1986 a stamp of Sojourner Truth was issued by the U.S. Postal Service.  Sojourner Truth, a black abolitionist and women’s rights activist, was born into slavery in Swartekill, Ulster County, New York, in 1797.  She died in Battle Creek, Michigan, on November 26, 1883.

 

 

 

 

 

1996: J.C. Watts becomes the first Black selected to     respond to a state of the union.  Also he was elected in 1990 to the  Oklahoma Corporation Commission as the first African-American in Oklahoma to win statewide office. He successfully ran for Congress in 1994 and was re-elected to three additional terms with increasing vote margins. Watts delivered the Republican response to Bill Clinton’s 1997 State of the Union address and was elected Chair of the House Republican Conference in 1998. He retired in 2003 and turned to lobbying and business work, also occasionally serving as a political commentator.