History: FBI wiretaps MLK
October 9, 2009: Barack Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. He was the third African American to win the award. The previous winners were Martin Luther King Jr. and Ralph Bunche.
October 10, 1871: Octavius Catto, a 32-year-old scientist and scholar who had pushed for African Americans to be treated as equal citizens, was assassinated during an election day uprising in Philadelphia, which had the nation’s largest population of free African Americans. A mob of white thugs, fearing the power of black voters, roamed the community that day, urging black residents to not vote. One of those men, Frank Kelly, confronted Catto, shooting him in the heart. Kelly escaped, but was arrested and returned to trial, where an all-white, all-male jury acquitted him. Catto’s headstone remembers him as “the forgotten hero.”
October 10, 1963: At the request of FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, U.S. Attorney General Robert Kennedy authorized the FBI to wiretap the telephones of Martin Luther King Jr. and his adviser, Stanley Levinson. More than a year earlier, Hoover told Kennedy that Levinson was a “secret member of the Communist Party.” President John Kennedy later urged King to distance himself from Levinson. King promised he would, but continued to communicate with Levinson through back channels because the businessman remained a valuable adviser and fundraiser for him. FBI Director James Comey has been quoted as saying he keeps a copy of the wiretap request on his desk “as a reminder of the bureau’s capacity to do wrong.”
October 11, 1901: African-American performers Bert Williams and George Walker recorded their music for the Victor Talking Machine Company. They became the first African-American recording artists and were one of the most successful comedy teams of all time, performing the first black musical comedy on Broadway.
October 12, 1932: Comedian and civil rights activist Dick Gregory was born in St. Louis. He belonged to a new generation of black comics that dared to take on race. In one of his routines, he talked about eating down South in a segregated restaurant: “Then these three white boys came up to me and said, ‘Boy, we’re giving you fair warning. Anything you do to that chicken, we’re gonna do to you.’ So I put down my knife and fork, I picked up that chicken and I kissed it. Then I said, ‘Line up, boys!’” He was the first black comic permitted to stay and talk with Tonight Show host Jack Paar. Involved in the civil rights movement, he helped bring food to the poor in the Mississippi Delta in 1963, working with Medgar Evers just days before Evers’ assassination. He also worked with Martin Luther King Jr. and others, using his comedy as a weapon against bigotry. In 2015, he received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and his life story became the subject of a one-man play produced by artist John Legend. The play is titled “Turn Me Loose,” after Evers’ last words. Gregory died in 2017, a little more than a year after the play's release.
October 12, 1970: Charles Gordone became the first African American to win a Pulitzer Prize in Drama for his play, No Place to Be Somebody.
October 13, 1792: Construction began on the White House with the laying of the cornerstone. African Americans, those enslaved and free, along with Europeans, did much of the construction. Wage rolls for May 1795 listed five enslaved men, Tom, Peter, Ben, Harry and Daniel, three of them owned by White House architect James Hoban. Lack of funds prompted the downsizing of the White House, which was finally ready for its first occupants by the end of 1800.
October 13, 1942: The U.S. House passed legislation abolishing poll taxes in national elections, but in the Senate, Southern senators filibustered, blocking the bill. Over the next several years, the House continued to pass the legislation — only to be blocked again by the Senate.
October 14, 1964: At age 35, Martin Luther King Jr. became the youngest recipient ever of the Nobel Peace Prize. In his acceptance speech, King said the award “is profound recognition that nonviolence is the answer to the crucial political and moral question of our time — the need for man to overcome oppression and violence without resorting to violence and oppression. Civilization and violence are antithetical concepts.”
October 15, 1883: The U.S. Supreme Court struck down the Civil Rights Bill of 1875 as unconstitutional, saying the government could not control the prejudices of people or companies. In these cases, African Americans had sued theaters, hotels and transit companies that had refused them admittance.
October 15, 1952: Model, actress, and businesswoman Beverly Johnson was born. Johnson made fashion history in August 1974 when she became the first African-American model to appear on the cover of Vogue magazine.
October 15, 1966: Huey Newton and Bobby Seale formed the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense in Oakland, California. Its revolutionary agenda and the fact that its members were armed prompted FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover to refer to it as “the greatest threat to the internal security of the United States.”