• In 1739, Quao of the Windward Maroons signed a treaty with the whites in Jamaica.
• In 1870, Matilda Evans, noted African American surgeon and the first African American woman licensed to practice medicine in South Carolina, was born.
• In 1940, sprinter Wilma Rudolph, the first woman to win three Olympic gold medals, was born.
• In 1960, Patrice Lumumba became the first prime minister of the Congo.
• In 1976, the United States vetoed Angola's application for membership in the United Nations.
• In 1997, Betty Shabazz, widow of Malcolm X and a champion of civil rights, died in New York of burns from a fire set by her twelve-year-old grandson.
• In 2003, affirmative action was reaffirmed by the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court issued decisions in two cases, Grutter v. Bollinger and Gratz v. Bollinger, which challenged the use of race in admissions policy at the University of Michigan's Law School and the undergraduate College of Literature, Science and the Arts. The court upheld the concept of race as one of many factors in university admission, but rejected approaches that failed to examine each student's record on an individual basis.
• In 2005, Nextel Communications publicly apologized for its racist ad for cellphones depicting a bug-eyed black male asking "Where you at?"

June 23: Augusta Savage
Born Augusta Fells in 1892 in Green Cove Springs, Florida, Augusta Savage was one of the luminaries of the Harlem Renaissance. More...

June 22: Octavia E. Butler
Born in 1947 in Pasadena, California, Octavia E. Butler is the first published African-American female science fiction writer. She is widely recognized and critically acclaimed, while introducing the African-American and feminist perspective into the genre. More...

June 21: Marie-Joseph Angélique
Marie-Joseph Angélique was a slave owned by François Poulin of Montreal in the early 1730s. Being in her sexual prime, she was expected to breed with male slaves as well as provide sexual services to her master. Angélique had other plans. More...

June 20: Adam Clayton Powell, Jr.
Adam Clayton Powell Jr., born November 29, 1908 in Connecticut and educated in New York, became one of the "new breed" of religious leaders—a fighting radical identifying himself with the "marching blacks". More...

June 19: Andrew Beard
On November 23, 1897 Andrew Beard obtained a patent for his railroad car coupler—the "Jenny Coupler." The device, improved in 1899, was the precursor of today's linking mechanism. More...

June 18: Lewis Temple
Today, Lewis Temple is presented as one of New Bedford's most ingenious citizens. In 1987, a life-size statue of Lewis Temple was erected on the lawn of the New Bedford Free Public Library. More...

June 17: Yaa Asantewa/The Asante Wars
The British found few people as difficult to subdue as the Asante of Ghana in their quest to build their West African colonial empire. More...