January

Jan 6, 2006
Lou Rawls, the velvet-voiced singer who sold more than 40 million albums and won three Grammys in a career that spanned nearly five decades, dies at age 72.

Jan 26, 2006
Hattie McDaniel, the first African American to win an Academy Award, becomes the 29th honoree in the U.S. Postal Service's Black Heritage commemorative stamp series.

Jan 30, 2006
Coretta Scott King, who turned a life shattered by her husband's assassination into one devoted to enshrining his legacy of human rights and equality, dies.

February

February 4, 2006
Warren Moon becomes the first black quarterback inducted into the National Football League Hall of Fame.

February 18, 2006
Shani Davis, who captured the men's 1,000-meter speed skating race in Turin, Italy, becomes the first African American to win an individual gold medal at the Winter Olympics.

February 20, 2006
Billy Dee Williams, stage and screen icon, receives the NAACP's Lifetime Achievement Award.

March

March 5, 2006
Three 6 Mafia wins an Oscar for Best Original Song for "It's Hard Out Here for a Pimp"; from the film Hustle & Flow. It's the first African-American hip-hop group to win an Academy Award for Best Song.

March 8, 2006
Gordon Parks, Hollywood's first major black filmmaker, dies at age 93. Parks blazed the trail for black-oriented films when he directed the 1971 hit Shaft.

May

May 19, 2006
Malcolm X and Dr. Betty Shabazz Memorial and Education Center opens in Harlem's historic Audubon Ballroom.

July

July 4, 2006
Stephanie Wilson, a 39-year-old Boston native and Harvard graduate, is the second black woman in space.

October

October 20, 2006
The Tuskegee Airmen, the United States Air Force's first black aviators, become an official component of the classroom curriculum of the Officers Training School.

November

November 8, 2006
Keith Ellison becomes the country's first Muslim congressman. Ellison is also Minnesota's first nonwhite representative in Washington.

November 8, 2006
Deval Patrick is elected as Massachusetts' first African American governor.

November 9, 2006
Ed Bradley, 60 Minutes correspondent and one of first black journalists prominently featured on network television, dies at age 65.

November 13, 2006
The Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial, located on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., breaks ground.

November 24, 2006
Robert McFerrin Sr., the first black man to sing solo at the New York Metropolitan Opera and the father of Grammy-winning conductor-vocalist Bobby McFerrin, dies at age 85.

December

December 7, 2006
B. B. King and John "Buck" O'Neil, Major League Baseball's first African American coach, receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

December 15, 2006
Magic Johnson launches I Stand with Magic: Campaign to End Black AIDS with a mission to help reduce new HIV infections in the black community by 50 percent over five years.

December 15, 2006
Oprah Winfrey announces she is expanding her media reach into primetime with reality TV shows "Oprah Winfrey's The Big Give" and "Your Money or Your Life".

February

February 4, 2007
Tony Dungy becomes the first African-American football coach to win the Super Bowl when his team, the Indianapolis Colts, defeats the Chicago Bears.

February 10, 2007
Illinois Senator Barack Obama announces he will run for president in the 2008 election.

February 25, 2007
Forest Whitaker is awarded an Academy Award for Best Actor in "The Last King Of Scotland" and Jennifer Hudson is award an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress in "Dreamgirls".

March

March, 2007
Barrington A. Irving, Jr. becomes the first black pilot to fly solo around the world.

March 29, 2007
Congress awards the Congressional Gold Medal to 350 Tuskegee Airmen and their widows recognizing their honorable service in World War II.

April

April, 2007
Ornette Coleman is awarded a Pulitzer Prize in music for his musical composition "Sound Grammar".

April, 2007
John Coltrane is posthumously awarded a Pulitzer Prize Special Citation for his "masterful improvisation, supreme musicianship and iconic centrality to the history of jazz."

May

May 15, 2007
Yolanda King, the daughter of civil rights activist Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., dies at the age of 51. She was an orator, a playwright and an actress who portrayed the wife of Malcolm X in 1981's "Death of a Prophet", and Rosa Parks in 1978's "King".

August

August, 2007
Martha-Elizabeth "Marta" Baylor becomes the first African-American to graduate with a Ph.D. in physics.

August 7, 2007
Major League baseball's Barry Bonds breaks Hank Aaron's home run record of 755 during a game against the Washington Nationals.

September

September 20, 2007
Around 10,000 protestors march in Jena, Louisiana, and even more in other cities, to protest the arrest and excessive charges of six African-American teenagers who were accused of beating a white teenager following racially-charged incidents.

October

October 30, 2007
John Youie Woodruff, the first African-American runner to win a gold medal at the 1936 Olympic Games dies at the age of 92.

October 30, 2007
Stanley O'Neal, CEO of global investment firm Merrill Lynch and the first African-American to lead a Wall Street firm, resigns under corporate pressures after the company reports losses of about 8.4 billion dollars.

November

November 5, 2007
After more than five years as CEO of the world's largest media conglomerate Time Warner, Richard Parsons announces he will resign at the end of the year. His resignation leaves only 5 African-Americans as CEOs of Fortune 500 companies.

March

March, 2008
Lieutenant Governor David Paterson becomes the first African-American governor of New York and the first legally blind governor of any U.S. state.

May

May, 2008
California Democrat Karen Bass becomes the first African-American woman elected as Speaker of a state House of Representatives.

June

June, 2008
Tiger Woods wins his third U.S. Open Golf Championship, becoming the first person to win a PGA tournament on the same course seven times, as well as the first person to win two tournaments at the same golf course in the same season.

July

July, 2008
Venus Williams wins her fifth Wimbledon singles title and wins the Wimbledon doubles title with her sister, Serena.

August

August, 2008
Cullen Jones becomes the second African-American to win an Olympic gold medal in swimming as part of the U.S. swim team. He also swam a leg in the world record breaking 4x100m Freestyle Relay.

August, 2008
Venus and Serena Williams win the Olympic gold medal in Beijing for women¢ǨÑ¢s doubles in tennis.

October

October, 2008
Actor, director and screenwriter, Tyler Perry, becomes the first African-American to own a major film and television studio. The more than 200,000 square-foot production complex is located in Atlanta, Georgia.

November

November, 2008
Senator Barack Obama becomes the first African-American president-elect. In turn, his wife Michelle Obama will be the first African-American first lady.