To leave at twenty-nine years old, MVP, having won the championship in ’64 and played for it in ’65. To go into the movies and break the color barrier and be in a sex scene with Raquel Welch. To get to be in The Dirty Dozen with some great actors. To make more money in one year than you damn near made in nine years of football. Everything about it was ingenious.
~ Jim Brown
February 15 – today in 1848, Sarah Roberts barred from white school in Boston. Her father, Benjamin Roberts, filed the first school integration suit on her behalf. Leon Spinks defeated Muhammad Ali for heavyweight boxing championship. Ali regained the title on September 15 and became the person to win the title three times in 1978.
February 16 – Joe Frazier knocked out Jimmy Ellis in the second round of their New York fight and became the world heavyweight boxing champion in 1970.
February 17 – James Nathaniel Brown, 74, Pro Football Hall of Fame Fullback, Born February 17, 1936 in St. Simons Island, GA, Michael Jeffrey Jordon, Basketball player, former minor league baseball player, Born New York, New York, February 17, 1963.
Once there were giants...
February 18 – today in 1913, the Delta Sigma Theta Sorority was incorporated at Howard University.
February 19 – Vonetta Flowers became the first black gold medalist in the history of the Winter Olympic Games. She and partner Jull Brakken won the inagural women’s two-person bobsled event in 2002 at Salt Lake City, Utah.
February 20 – Death of Frederick Douglass (78), Douglass was the leading Black spokesman for almost fifty years. He was a major abolitionist and a lecturer and editor. Charles Wade Barkley, basketball player, born Leeds, AL, February 20, 1963.
February 21 – today in 1987, African Americans in Tampa, Florida rebelled after an African American man was killed by a white police officer while in custody.
El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz a.k.a. Malcolm X is assassinated while speaking at The Audubon Ballroom in Manhattan. He is 39 years old.
Source: http://www.floridablackhistory.com/facts.cfm
In 2002 Vonetta Flowers and Jill Bakken won the gold medal in the women's 2-woman bobsled.
