This Week In Black History April 24-30, 2024

APRIL 24 1867—The first national meeting of the Ku Klux Klan is held at the Maxwell House in Nashville, Tenn. The White supremacist organization and its various offshoots would go on to launch a wave of terror, which would result in death and injury to thousands of African Americans over the years. The Klan would remain the nation’s most powerful anti-Black terrorist organization for the next 70 years. The first chapter, however, was actually formed a year earlier in Pulaski, Tenn. Most of the early Klan mem­bers were former soldiers of the defeated Confederate Army from the Civil War. The group’s initial aim was to spread fear among Blacks and prevent them from voting. But as the organization grew, it expanded into anti-Jew­ish, anti-Catholic and anti-foreigner activities. The first grand wizard was Nathan Bedford Forest. 1944—The United Negro College Fund is incorporated. Over the years, the fundraising activities of the UNCF would result in thousands of college educations for Afri­can Americans. Since 2004, Dr. Michael L. Lomax has served as president and CEO of UNCF, the nation’s largest private provider of scholarships and other educational support to African American students 1944—Whites only political primaries are declared un­constitutional. In a case...