* Local History Facts are Highlighted in red

1950 - Martha Braun, daughter of Commodore Ballroom owner, married black singer Billy Daniels against the wishes of her parents.

1955 - Local NAACP members protested to the City License Commission against the owner of the Golden Nugget, who had refused to serve black patrons.

1957-1968 - Civil Rights Movement spread throughout the South. Breaking the back of segregation was the number one priority of the movement, and one of the earliest developments in this interest was the student sit-ins. Boycotting and picketing of restaurants and shops refusing service to African Americans followed. Then came Freedom Riders, who tested the southern policy of segregated and separate facilities in public transportation. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson.

1966 - Dave Currie was elected Captain of the 1967 Lowell High School football team.

1967 - 150 race riots occurred in the United States. Thurgood Marshall was the first African American appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court.

1968 - The City of Lowell established a Human Relations Advisory Committee to recommend policies to prevent discrimination towards minorities and Doctor Bruce Lambert is named chairman.

1968 - Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church moved into the old Assemblies of God Church on Grand Street.

1968 - Martin Luther King, Jr., was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee. Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated. Nixon was elected President.

1970 - Racial disturbance against blacks broke out at the Bishop Markham Housing Project.

1970 - Gorham Street Veteran’s Housing Project was renamed the Julian Steele Housing Project after the prominent black state commissioner of Community Affairs.

1971 - The City of Lowell changed its Human Relations Advisory Committee into a full Commission and Samuel Crayton was named Chairman.

1972 - Racial disturbance occurred again at the Bishop Markham Housing Project and led to the arrest of sixteen white residents.

1975 - Birdie Malbory and other young black women formed Soul Black Sixteen, a group interested in promoting black culture and raising scholarship money for African American students.

1976 - Alex Haley wrote Roots: The Saga of an American Family, which used fictional details to flesh out a factual history of seven generations of his family in America and several in West Africa.

1978 - Major Frederick D. Gregory, Major Guion S. Bluford and Dr. Ronald E. McNair became the first African American astronauts.

1978 - Samuel Crayton elected President of Community Teamwork, Incorporated.

1989 - Laurence Douglas Wilder became the first black man to be elected governor in the United States.

1992 - Mae Jemison becomes the first African American woman astronaut, spending more than a week orbiting Earth in the space shuttle Endeavour.

1993 - Toni Morrison became the first black writer to win the Nobel Prize for literature.

1994 - Samuel Crayton received Local Hero Award from Community Teamwork, Incorporated.

1995 - Dr. Bernard A. Harris, Jr., a physician, was the first African American astronaut to walk in space.

2000 - Black population was over 36 million of the total U.S. population of over 281 million.

2001 - Colin Powell became the first black Secretary of State.

Two African Americans are CEOs of Fortune 500 companies – Kenneth I. Chenault of American Express and Franklin D. Raines of Fannie Mae.

2003 - Arthur Charles Farris inducted into Lowell High School Athletic Hall of Fame.

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