Ceiling of Debre Birhan Selassie church, Gondar, Ethiopia. Photo: Rod Waddington, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Licence · Source
Real events, births and milestones from Africa and the diaspora.
2C2KPhotography, CC BY 4.0, Wikimedia Commons 1865 Union troops arrived in Galveston, Texas, to announce that enslaved African Americans were free, more than two years after the Emancipation Proclamation, an event commemorated annually as Juneteenth.
Sources: The White House (Obama-era and Trump-era archives) ; Texas State Historical Association ; U.S. Government Publishing Office (Congressional Record)
CultureSouth Africa's Natives Land Act took effect, barring Black South Africans from owning land across most of the country and laying the legal groundwork for later apartheid-era segregation.
Sources: South African History Online ; South African History Archive (SAHA)
Politics
Rob Croes for Anefo, CC0, Wikimedia Commons 1917 Joshua Nkomo, the Zimbabwean liberation leader who later served as the country's vice president, was born.
Sources: BlackPast.org ; The Herald (Zimbabwe)
Birth
Public Domain, Wikimedia Commons 1932 Sol Plaatje, a founding member of the African National Congress and one of South Africa's first Black journalists and novelists, died.
Sources: African Studies Centre Leiden (Leiden University) ; Rhodes University (Sol Plaatje Institute)
Death
University of Bridgeport, Public Domain, Wikimedia Commons 2010 Manute Bol, the Sudanese-American basketball player who used his NBA earnings and fame to fund humanitarian causes in Sudan, died.
Sources: FIBA ; New York Post
DeathThe Extension of University Education Act, No. 45 of 1959, came into force in South Africa, barring Black students from the open universities without government permission; it followed the Separate University Education Bill of 1957.
Sources: Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Chronology of Apartheid Legislation (SAHA) ; University of Cape Town News
Politics